The outcry for this latest ISIS attack has sadly not reverberated around the world as more recent atrocities in mainland Europe. A hastag doesn’t bring back any of the dead, but shows some solidarity with the innocent people who were murdered in cold blood by an IS suicide attack on a hospital in Quetta.
The attack left at least 70 dead and over one hundred wounded, the death toll is likely to rise.
The suicide bomber attacked on Monday and blew themselves up in a crowd of journalists and lawyers who had congregated to carry the body of the lawyer, Anwar Kasi, who have been shot and killed earlier in the day.
There was a backlash on social media as it was felt that not enough people registered their anger at the attack, compared to the attacks on European soil, with the sickening attack in Nice being an example.
You can not bomb a hospital in the name of anything! #PrayForPakistan #PrayForTheWorld
image by @thereaIbanksy pic.twitter.com/5V35sPMiaq— Ramazan Sevinç (@sev_ram) August 9, 2016
70 murdered but no coverage? Let’s #PrayForPakistan just as we would ‘Pray’ for every western country hit by these attacks.
— Ian Sinkins (@IanSinkins) August 8, 2016
The hashtag #PrayforPakistan was used to show solidarity with the innocent people who were massacred by the death cult IS. It is often forgotten in the western world that IS kill a huge amount more Muslims than Christians. Each attack is an attack on every one of us, regardless where is takes place.
Markets and schools were closed in Quetta and lawyers also boycotted courts in strike action against the attacks.
Isis’s Amaq news agency claimed they carried out the attack and said: “A Martyr from the Islamic State detonated his explosive belt at a gathering of justice ministry employees and Pakistani policemen in the city of Quetta.”
The attack in Quetta does not seen to have a clear motive at the moment, however numerous lawyers have been murdered in the area recently. Quetta is the provincial capital of Baluchistan and there has been a numerous incidents of separatist violence, thus attack on the judicial system could be a way to unstable the institutions that govern the area under the rule of law.