On Easter Sunday, the extremist Taliban splinter group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (a Taliban splinter group that has declared their allegiance to ISIS) set off a suicide bomb in a park in Pakistan. More than three hundred and forty people were injured, and the death count has risen to over seventy, perhaps more than thirty of whom were children. Many of the victims were women and children at the park in Lahore, Pakistan. (Lahore is a city in the north east region of Pakistan, near the border of northern India.)

The attack was specifically on Easter and aimed at targeting Christians for their Easter celebrations, specifically though, for their religion. The Washington Post quotes Jamaat-ul-Ahrar as saying, “it was our people who attacked the Christians in Lahore, celebrating Easter.”  The speaker for the group, Ehsanullah Ehsan, released a statement that stated these attacks against Christians will continue. CNN reports that Christians make up a mere 2 percent of Pakistan’s population. Still there is much religious animosity between the Muslims and the Christians. Ehsan told NBC, “Members of the Christian community who were celebrating Easter today were our prime target, we didn’t want to kill women and children. Our targets were male members of the Christian community.” Despite that, the Washington Post reports that of the deaths from this attack, many more were Muslim than Christian. Additionally, NBC quoted the Lahore Police Chief Haider Ashraf as saying, “Mostly women and children [were] killed in the blast.”

This park attack is the most recent in a series of bombs. In 2013 more than eighty people were killed in a suicide bombing at a church in Peshawar, Pakistan. Then last March, according to CNN, “suicide bombers attacked a Christian community, also in Lahore, setting off two blasts that killed at least fourteen people.” The Easter attack, though, was the deadliest attack since the massacre of 134 school children at a military academy in December of 2014; there have been multiple attacks in the many months between. The government has come down on this internal terrorism since the school massacre. The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, “strongly condemned the blast,” according to CNN.

The bombing was horrifying and devastating to those who survived. Al Jazeera reports, “TV footage showed children and women standing in pools of blood outside the park, crying and screaming as rescue workers, officials, police, and bystanders carried wounded people to ambulances and private cars. Other witnesses said that they saw body parts strewn across the ground once the dust had settled after the blast.” Mian Ashraf, who witnessed the bombing told reporters, “I was a few blocks away from the blast. Many people were running and screaming like the world had collapsed. Until when will we see our loved ones getting killed in such attacks?” Another witness, Hasan Imran, said, “When the blast occurred, the flames were so high they reached above the trees and I saw bodies flying in the air.”

Leaders around the world express the same sentiment condemning the attack and mourning the deaths of those lost in the bombing, that includes the governments of India, the United States, and Australia. Rightly so too, the Washington Post describes the Pakistani people as “horrified… asking what their government can do to protect them from extremist violence.” Pope Francis called the bombing “vile, and abominable,” and called for the Pakistani government to, “make every effort to restore security and serenity.”

This attack has been taken very seriously by the Pakistani authorities. According to the BBC, the government questioned five thousand people regarding the bombing. Reuters reported that 216 suspects were detained “pending further investigation.” Additionally intelligence operations are being carried out to further identify the perpetrators of the attack. Military spokesperson Asim Bajwa said, “A number of suspect terrorists and facilitators [have been] arrested and huge cache of arms and ammunition recovered.” Reuters further reported regarding the religious animosity that, “Even as authorities pursued Islamist militants across Punjab, hundreds of ultra-conservative Muslim protesters remained camped out in front of parliament on Tuesday in the capital, Islamabad, days after clashing with police.”
Needless to say this massacre was devastating and it would be tragic if another event of this caliber were to occur again. Unfortunately, Taliban faction- Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, has vowed these attacks will continue, all we can do is wait.