Pakistani Christians held funerals amidst tight security Tuesday for the victims of twin Taliban suicide attacks that targeted churches two days earlier in the worst attack on the minority group in over a year.
Seventeen people died as a result of the suicide bombings in the Youhanabad district of Lahore, with more than 70 wounded.
Two men were later lynched by an angry mob who suspected they were militants, though authorities Tuesday announced they were investigating claims by relatives of one of the men that he was an innocent shopkeeper caught up in the fracas.
The attack also sparked two days of rioting by thousands of Christians who clashed with water canon-wielding police, blocked roads and forced a partial shutdown of the city’s public bus system.
At least two Christians were also killed Monday when a panicked female motorist drove through a crowd of protesters, interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told parliament Tuesday, revising an earlier figure of one death in the incident. Around a dozen people were also injured.
In the low-income Youhanabad neighbourhood, home to more than 100,000 Christians, police and paramilitary rangers were out in force preventing outsiders from entering.
Meanwhile, gunmen on Tuesday killed two female polio workers and a police guard in northwest Pakistan, the latest in a spate of deadly attacks on the immunisation teams.
Police said two attackers fired at the workers as they gave polio drops to children in the mountainous Sheikhabad area, 60 kilometres northeast of the city of Mansehra.
Seventeen people died as a result of the suicide bombings in the Youhanabad district of Lahore, with more than 70 wounded.
Two men were later lynched by an angry mob who suspected they were militants, though authorities Tuesday announced they were investigating claims by relatives of one of the men that he was an innocent shopkeeper caught up in the fracas.
The attack also sparked two days of rioting by thousands of Christians who clashed with water canon-wielding police, blocked roads and forced a partial shutdown of the city’s public bus system.
At least two Christians were also killed Monday when a panicked female motorist drove through a crowd of protesters, interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told parliament Tuesday, revising an earlier figure of one death in the incident. Around a dozen people were also injured.
In the low-income Youhanabad neighbourhood, home to more than 100,000 Christians, police and paramilitary rangers were out in force preventing outsiders from entering.
Meanwhile, gunmen on Tuesday killed two female polio workers and a police guard in northwest Pakistan, the latest in a spate of deadly attacks on the immunisation teams.
Police said two attackers fired at the workers as they gave polio drops to children in the mountainous Sheikhabad area, 60 kilometres northeast of the city of Mansehra.
Source: New Age
