A series of bombings in different parts of Pakistan killed 115 people yesterday, including 81 who died in a sectarian attack on a billiard hall in the city of Quetta.
The blasts punctuated one of the deadliest days in recent years in Pakistan, where the government faces an insurgency by Taliban militants in the North-West and Baluch militants in the South-West.
The country is also home to many enemies of the US that Washington has frequently targeted with drone attacks.
A US missile strike killed five suspected militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
The billiard hall in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, was hit by two blasts about 10 minutes apart, killing 81 people and injuring more than 160 others.
The billiard hall was located in an area dominated by Shi’ite Muslims, and most of the victims were from the minority sect.
Many people who rushed to the scene after the first blast were hit by the second bomb, which caused the roof of the building to collapse.
Police officers, journalists and rescue workers who responded to the initial explosion were also among the dead.
The sectarian militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for the attack.
One of the group’s spokesmen, Bakar Saddiq, said the first attack was carried out by a suicide bomber and the second was a bomb planted in a car, which was detonated by remote control.
Radical Sunni groups often target Pakistan’s Shi’ite minority, who they believe are not true Muslims.
Earlier in the day, a bomb targeting paramilitary soldiers in a commercial area in Quetta killed 12 people and wounded more than 40 others, said a senior police officer.
The United Baluch Army, a separatist group, claimed responsibility for the attack on the soldiers in calls to local journalists.
Elsewhere in Pakistan, a bomb in a crowded Sunni mosque in the North-West city of Mingora killed 22 people and wounded more than 70, said senior police officer Akhtar Hayyat.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Television footage of the earlier market attack showed survivors picking through debris, and emergency crews taking away the wounded.
“Frontier Corps (paramilitary) personnel were the target because the bomb was planted underneath their vehicle,” police investigator Hamid Shakeel told reporters.
The dead include one paramilitary soldier and two civilian officers.