Balochistan government spokesman Anwarul Kakar said Chief Minister Nawab Sanaullah Zehri was personally monitoring the situation.
He added that the casualties were being ferried to hospitals in the nearby industrial town of Hub and the port city of Karachi, where a state of emergency has been declared.
Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo said the suicide bombing could be a reprisal for the killing of a senior commander of a banned militant organisation. Jundullah chief Saqib, alias Arif alias Anjum Abbas, was taken down in a gunfight with security forces in Hub on Friday. His wife and nine-year-old son were also injured in the clash.
The carnage came a day before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was scheduled to flag off the first shipment of trade goods from Gwadar port to international markets, marking the historic launch of trade activity through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
“Balochistan has become frontline state to bear the cost imposed on Pakistan for CPEC and India’a non-conventional warfare,” Jan Achakzai, special assistant to the chief minister, wrote on Twitter while commenting on the shrine bombing. However, Ports and Shipping Minister Bezenjo believes it could be linked to sectarianism and not CPEC.
A woman mourns the death of relative in a mortuary in Karachi on November 12, 2016, following the arrival of those killed in bombing at a Sufi shrine PHOTO: AFP
Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti, who briefed the media on the deadly blast in Gwadar, said that the provincial government has no helicopters to ferry the casualties from the site. “It’s not possible to fly helicopters for rescue in pitch darkness,” he added. “We have sent ambulances to the site.”
Chief Minister Zehri, who was in Gwadar for Sunday’s CPEC ceremony, directed that all available resources be utilised to ferry the injured to hospitals. “Terrorists cannot deter us with such attacks. Action against them will continue unabated,” he said while strongly condemning the bloody attack.
President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif strongly condemned the bombing in separate statements. “The government is determined to eliminate terrorism and extremists from the country,” Mamnoon said in a statement expressing sympathy with the victims and their families.
A statement from Sharif’s office said the prime minister called for the “best medical treatment” to be given to the wounded.
The Islamic State terrorist group, also known by its Arabic acronym Da’ish, claimed responsibility for the attack via Amaq, its affiliated news agency.
Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, is afflicted by Islamist militancy, sectarian violence and a separatist insurgency. Local militants claimed to have worked with Da’ish to attack a police academy in Balochistan last month, killing 61 people in the deadliest assault on a security installation in Pakistan’s history.
In August, a suicide bombing at a Quetta hospital claimed by the Islamic State group and a faction of the Pakistani Taliban killed 73 people.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/1229397/bomber-wreaks-carnage-sufi-saints-shrine/
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