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Pakistan government failed to curb militancy: Court

Pakistan lawyers hold a demonstration to condemn a bombing in Quetta that killed dozens of people and wounded many more, in Lahore, Aug. 8, 2016. (Photo by AP)

Pakistan's top court has ruled that the government has failed to curb militancy and extremism across the violence-wracked country.

A commission set up by the Supreme Court to investigate a deadly Taliban assault in southwestern city of Quetta last August said in a scathing report on Friday that the Interior Ministry and the counter-terrorism department had been responsible for security lapses that enabled the attack.

The 86-page report, which is based on recorded statements from 45 officials, says they “categorically failed” in their tasks.

It was not immediately clear what impact the report could have or what action could follow.

On August 08, a bomb explosion ripped through a major hospital in the restive city of Quetta in southwest Pakistan.

Pakistani media reports said at least 70 people were killed when the bomb went off in the emergency ward of the hospital. About 120 people were injured in the incident which took place when a group of lawyers had gathered in the hospital to accompany the body of a prominent attorney who had been shot earlier in the day.

Bilal Anwar Kasi, who was the former president of Balochistan Bar Association, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the city.

Both a pro-Taliban militant group in Pakistan, known as Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, as well as the Daesh terror group claimed responsibility for the bomb blast at Quetta hospital.

Also in October, a deadly siege of a police training academy on the outskirts of Quetta in the restive Balochistan Province left over 60 people dead and wounded over 100 others. The attack lasted several hours and ended after fierce gun battles between security forces and the assailants.

Pakistani lawmakers from the provincial Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly light candles during a ceremony to mark the second anniversary of the attack on a Peshawar school in 2014, in Peshawar, Pakistan, Friday, Dec. 16, 2016. (Photo by AP)

The report comes as Pakistanis hold memorial ceremonies marking the second anniversary of another Taliban school attack in the northwestern city of Peshawar

On December 16, 2014, a group of militants mounted an attack against the Army Public School in Peshawar, massacring 154 people, most of them children.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was carried out in retaliation for an ongoing Pakistani military offensive against the militants in the country’s tribal belt.

Thousands of people have been killed over the past decade as a result of the surge in violence in Pakistan.


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