Pakistanis on Tuesday mourned the victims of a Taliban-claimed suicide bomb in Lahore, as the death toll rose to 15 and the city's residents railed at the government for failing to protect them. The chief minister of Punjab province Shahbaz Sharif declared a day of mourning after Monday's blast, believed to be targeting police managing a busy protest at rush hour on Mall Road, one of Lahore's main arteries. At least 15 people were killed, emergency official Ahmad Raza said, including six police officers, while up to 87 were injured. Official funerals were held Tuesday for some of the victims. The toll could have been much higher, Raza said, but for two vehicles — a TV news van and a minivan belonging to the protesters — which absorbed much of the impact of the blast. The Pakistani Taliban faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the assault, which came three days after it announced it would carry out a series of attacks on government installations around the country. The attack underscored the challenges faced by Pakistan in its push to stamp out militancy, even though security dramatically improved in 2015 and 2016. Homegrown groups like the umbrella Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) retain the ability to carry out spectacular attacks, despite a military-led crackdown on extremism. Lahore residents vented their fury at the militants and the government at the blast site early Tuesday. "They (the militants) have no link with Islam nor do they believe in any religion, the only thing they know is killing people, this is utterly an act of terrorism," Tariq Saleem said. Nadeem Akhter called on the government to do more to bring the situation under control. "Our children and people are being killed in these attacks," he said. Both British High Commissioner to Pakistan Thomas Drew and US ambassador David Hale branded the attack "cowardly" in separate statements, expressing support for the victims, while the EU said it was "shocked and saddened" by the incident. Lahore, the country's cultural capital, suffered one of Pakistan's deadliest attacks in 2016 — a Jamaat-ul-Ahrar suicide bomb in a park last Easter that killed more than 70 including many children. But such incidents have been rare in the city in recent years. Meanwhile, a top Pakistani bomb squad officer has been killed along with another policeman while trying to defuse a bomb in the southwestern city of Quetta, police said on Tuesday. The commander of the city's bomb disposal unit and a colleague were killed late on Monday, hours after another blast killed 15 people and wounded more than 80 in the eastern city of Lahore. The blasts were claimed by different militant factions and did not appear to be related. They came after a period of relative calm had bolstered hopes for an overall improvement in security. "They died on the spot, their bodies blown up," Abdul Razzaq Cheema, deputy inspector general of police in Quetta, said of the two officers. The Sunni Muslim militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi's Al Alami faction claimed responsibility on Tuesday.
