KARACHI: At least 70 people died on Thursday (Feb 16) when a bomb ripped through a crowded Sufi shrine in Pakistan, police said, in the deadliest attack to hit the militancy-plagued country so far in 2017. The blast was triggered by an Islamic State suicide bomber, according to a claim by the Sunni militant group's semi-official Amaq news agency. Reports on the exact death toll have varied — with The Associated Press reporting that at least 75 people died, while the Pakistani newspaper Dawn put the number at 70. A number of women and children reportedly were among the dead. A police source said a suicide bomber had entered the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, a 13th century Muslim saint, and blown himself up among the devotees. Worshippers had converged on the shrine for dhamaal, a ritual that packed the area with people — thousands of people, by CNN's account. Immediately following the explosion, Pakistan's chief of army staff, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, issued a blistering statement through the military's spokesman. Military chief General Qamer Javed Bajwa warned: "Each drop of (the) nation's blood shall be revenged, and revenged immediately. "No more restraint for anyone." In a statement, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also struck a defiant tone: "Such cowardly acts cannot deter the resolve of the nation to stand against terrorism and our government is committed to root out this menace." As The Washington Post notes, the shrine blast is the latest incident in what has been a particularly deadly week for Pakistan, which has been buffeted by attacks not only from ISIS, but also Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a Taliban splinter group which has promised a campaign of violence against government buildings. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban said it had carried out a suicide bombing in Lahore which killed 13 people and wounded dozens more on Monday, days after the group had vowed to launch a fresh offensive. In the wake of that attack, Bajwa pledged that "terrorists of all hue and colour, their masters, financiers, planners and abettors including from outside will be hunted across the country." The Post reports that Pakistan "formally complained" to its neighbor Afghanistan on Wednesday, "charging that the militants were operating from sanctuaries across the border." In response to Thursday's attack, the military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor, blamed "hostile powers" and "sanctuaries in Afghanistan." He tweeted that Pakistan would be immediately closing its border with Afghanistan "till further orders due to security reasons." The Islamic State has waged a campaign of violence against Shiite Muslims as well as Sufis, who take a mystical approach to Islam and prize a direct relationship with the divine. The attacks underscore Pakistan's struggle to stamp out extremism, which was stepped up after the country's deadliest ever attack, a Pakistani Taliban assault on a school in Peshawar in 2014 which left more than 150 people dead - mostly children.
Two separate bombings take place in Pakistan, killing at least seven people. A suicide bomber kills five people at the administrative headquarters in the Mohmand Agency tribal district while the other kills two people at a hospital in Peshawar. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claims responsibility for the first attack.