A pair of suicide bombers detonated their explosives outside a historic
church in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, killing 75 people in the
deadliest-ever attack on the country's Christian minority, officials
said.
A wing of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing
in the city of Peshawar, saying it would continue to target non-Muslims
until the United States stopped drone attacks in the country's remote
tribal region.
The latest drone strike came Sunday, when missiles hit a pair of
compounds in the North Waziristan tribal area, killing six suspected
militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
The attack on the All Saints Church, which also wounded 110 people,
underlines the threat posed by the Pakistani Taliban at a time when the
government is seeking a peace deal with the militants. It will likely
intensify criticism from those who believe that negotiating peace with
the Taliban is a mistake.
The attack occurred as hundreds of worshippers were coming out of the
church in the city's Kohati Gate district after services to get a free
meal of rice offered on the front lawn, said a top government
administrator, Sahibzada Anees.
"There were blasts and there was hell for all of us," said Nazir John,
who was at the church with at least 400 other worshippers. "When I got
my senses back, I found nothing but smoke, dust, blood and screaming
people. I saw severed body parts and blood all around."
Survivors wailed and hugged each other in the wake of the blasts. The
white walls of the church, which first opened in the late 1800s, were
pockmarked with holes caused by ball bearings or other metal objects
contained in the bombs to cause maximum damage. Blood stained the floor
and was splashed on the walls. Plates filled with rice were scattered
across the ground.
The attack was carried out by a pair of suicide bombers who detonated
their explosives almost simultaneously, said police officer Shafqat
Malik. Authorities found their body parts and were trying to determine
their age, he said.
The blasts killed 75 people and wounded another 110, said Jamil Shah, a
spokesman at the hospital in Peshawar where the victims were being
treated. The dead included women and children, said Sher Ali Khan,
another doctor at the hospital.
The number of casualties from the blasts was so high that the hospital was running out of caskets for the dead and beds for the wounded, said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, a former information minister of surrounding Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province who was on the scene.
"This is the deadliest attack against Christians in our country," said Irfan Jamil, the bishop of the eastern city of Lahore.
One of the wounded, John Tariq, who lost his father in the attack, asked
of the attackers, "What have we done wrong to these people? Why are we
being killed?"
Ahmad Marwat, who identified himself as the spokesman for the Jundullah
wing of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack.
"All non-Muslims in Pakistan are our target, and they will remain our
target as long as America fails to stop drone strikes in our country,"
Marwart told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed
location.
Jundullah has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on minority
Shiite Muslims in the southwestern Baluchistan province. Hard-line Sunni
extremists like the Taliban consider Shiites to be heretics.
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