On Monday afternoon, 20-year-old goldsmith Hassan Ahmed was heading back home from work on his motorbike and passing by Lahore’s busy Mall Road.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of pharmacists were rallying against changes to a drug sale law, outside of the provincial assembly building.<\/p>\n
There was a sudden blast.<\/p>\n
“That is exactly when the suicide bomber detonated the bomb and we lost Hassan,” Saqib Rehman, Hassan’s longtime friend, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
“[Hassan] was the sole breadwinner of his family of 10. He passed away at a very young age. Why was there not enough security to stop cars and bikes from passing by?”<\/p>\n
At least 13 people were killed in the attack, including seven police officers and six civilians.<\/p>\n
Within hours, the Pakistani Taliban<\/a> faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the blast.<\/p>\n A spokesman for the group warned in a statement that Monday’s bomb was “just the start”.<\/p>\n Pakistanis across the Pubjab province mourned the victims on Tuesday, blaming poor security measures.<\/p>\n Most of the markets and businesses were closed and lawyers boycotted court proceedings in the provincial capital.<\/p>\n Punjab’s government declared one day of mourning\u00a0with the national flag lowered to half-staff at all government buildings.<\/p>\n Lahore residents are “furious” at the armed groups conducting attacks, Rehman said, adding that “people here feel the attacks will increase in the near future”.<\/p>\n “If this suicide bomber could conduct an attack this easily, it tells us that we are not safe or protected.”<\/p>\n Monday’s attack underlines Pakistan<\/a>‘s challenges of eliminating armed groups and improving security.<\/p>\n “The attacker was not targeting civilians, he went directly towards the police officials who were negotiating with the protesters,” said\u00a0Arshad Dogar, a crime reporter for The News, a local newspaper.<\/p>\n Dogar had been covering the rally and was present at the time of the attack.<\/p>\n “In a situation like this, where there are about 2,000 people gathered together, the security measures were close to zero,” Dogar told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n “No one was being checked. Anyone could come and participate in the rally. The suicide attacker walked in without any hurdles and successfully conducted the attack.”<\/p>\n In 2016, Lahore suffered one of Pakistan’s deadliest assaults when a suicide attack in a park killed more than 70 people<\/a>, including many children.<\/p>\n Jamaat-ul-Ahrar group, which claimed that attack, said it was targeting members of Pakistan’s Christian minority who had gathered there\u00a0to celebrate Easter Sunday.<\/p>\n Jamaat-ul-Ahrar also claimed responsibility for a\u00a0bombing at a hospital\u00a0<\/a>in Quetta that killed 74 people in August last year.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2017\/02\/pakistan-mourns-victims-lahore-rally-blast-170214073156053.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Monday afternoon, 20-year-old goldsmith Hassan Ahmed was heading back home from work on his motorbike and passing by Lahore’s busy Mall Road. Hundreds of pharmacists were rallying against changes to a drug sale law, outside of the provincial assembly building. There was a sudden blast. “That is exactly when the suicide bomber detonated the bomb and we lost Hassan,”… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":595,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions\/595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Poor security<\/h2>\n