Lawyers in Pakistan boycott courts after bombing

Lawyers in Pakistan took part in a nationwide strike Tuesday after at least 70 people — many of them lawyers — were killed in a suicide attack outside a hospital in the western city of Quetta in the Balochistan province.

The Supreme Court Bar Association and the Pakistan Bar Council said its members were holding a week of mourning and would boycott the courts in protest at the deaths, the BBC reported. Rallies are planned across the country Tuesday, the broadcaster added.

The suicide bomber targeted the entrance to the Civil Hospital's emergency department Monday where the body of Bilal Anwar Kasi, the president of the Balochistan Bar Association lawyers’ organization, was taken after he was shot dead on his way to work Monday.

A large number of lawyers and journalists had gathered at the hospital to mourn Kasi. The attack injured more than 100 people. Markets and schools were closed Tuesday in Balochistan.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway faction of the Taliban, claimed responsibility for the suicide attack and Kasi’s murder. The Islamic State also claimed responsibility for the hospital attack, Al Jazeera reported. Neither claim could be independently verified.

"We have been targeted because we always raise our voice for people's rights and for democracy," Ali Zafar, the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, told reporters in the northeastern city of Lahore, according to the BBC.

"Lawyers will not just protest this attack, but also prepare a long-term plan of action," he added.

Pope Francis said the attack was "senseless and brutal," the Vatican said in a statement.

"His Holiness Pope Francis sends heartfelt condolences to the relatives of the deceased, to the authorities and to the entire nation, as he offers the assurance of his prayers for the many injured victims of this senseless and brutal act of violence," the statement said.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which broke away from the Pakistani Taliban in 2014, has claimed a number of attacks, including a bombing that targeted Christians at a park in Lahore on Easter Sunday that killed more than 70 people.