Pakistani authorities faced a furious backlash on Sunday over security and medical failures after a suicide bomber killed 99 people at a volleyball match in one of the country’s worst attacks.
Police rounded up dozens of suspects and authorities opened an investigation into poor medical care as the local hospital in the remote north-west struggled to treat casualties lying on the floor without enough medicine.
The attacker rammed a car bomb into a crowd of men, women and children watching the tournament in Shah Hasan Khan village, a pro-government area in the district of Lakki Marwat, reducing the sporting event to carnage on Friday.
Police said the death toll had risen to 99, with 87 wounded being treated, making it the third most deadly attack in a nearly three-year extremist campaign in the nuclear-armed Muslim country.
“There was nowhere in the whole district to treat the injured … The provincial health department is responsible for all this. Most of the people died on their way to other hospitals,” said Mannawar Khan, a member of Parliament from the district.
The health minister for North West Frontier Province conceded that only one doctor out of 10 at the hospital in Lakki Marwat had been on duty, conceding limited health care had “caused more human losses”.
“After the blast, several hours passed but the other doctors didn’t come. I don’t know why they were missing. We have opened an inquiry and a committee has been constituted,” siad Syed Zahir Ali Shah.
Survivors searched for body parts under the rubble of around 20 collapsed homes, as mourners visited the cemetery and wept over the freshly dug graves and the village plunged into mourning.
There were scenes of chaos at the hospital in the town of Lakki Marwat, which said it was short of medicine and beds, overwhelmed with casualties.
“Even now the injured are undergoing treatment on the hospital floor. Some have brought their own beds,” Doctor Usman Ali told AFP by telephone.
Shopkeeper Riaz Khatok said from the hospital: “My daughter died because of the poor facilities in the hospital. There was no bed, no medicine and not even the X-ray machine was working.
“There was nowhere else in Lakki Marwat to take the wounded. Most of the dead died because of bleeding.”
The local peace committee that organised the tournament and heads an anti-Taliban militia blamed the government for failing to prevent the attack.
“The government didn’t provide us with any security. There were no security personnel or policemen at that time. Those policemen killed in the attack were here to see the match,” said Mushtaq Ahmad, the committee’s head.
Suspicion has fallen on Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its allies in North Waziristan, where US drone attacks have increasingly targeted al-Qaeda fighters and the Haqqani network, which is known for attacks in Afghanistan.
For two months, Pakistani troops have pursued an offensive aimed at wiping out TTP hideouts in South Waziristan, sparking revenge attacks.
“We have arrested 41 suspects and are interrogating them … This village is adjacent to the Bhitni area of South Waziristan and the bomber came from that area,” said district police chief Mohammad Ayub Khan.
Suicide and bomb attacks blamed on the Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants have killed more than 2Â 880 people in Pakistan since July 2007, increasingly targeting civilians and government security installations.
Under huge US pressure to crack down on militants destabilising the border with Afghanistan, where 113Â 000 US and Nato troops are fighting the Taliban, Pakistan has launched a wave of offensives in its tribal belt.
In the north, a roadside bomb killed two anti-Taliban militiamen and wounded four others in Khararri village in Bajaur, officials said.
The bullet-ridden bodies of a man and woman were also found dumped on the outskirts of Khar with a letter saying: “All those who go against sharia will face the same fate, from Tehreek-e-Taliban.” – AFP