Easter Sunday turns bloody in Pakistan as suicide bomber kills scores

On Easter Sunday, a suicide bomber set off a powerful blast close to a children’s swing set in a public park on Sunday evening in the eastern city of Lahore, killing at least 70 people and wounding around 300, rescue workers and officials said. It comes at a difficult time for Pakistan's Christians, some of whom were in the city's Gulshan Iqbal Park to celebrate the holiday Sunday evening, only to see their Easter Sunday fragment into terror and chaos.
Jamaat-e-Ahrar, a splinter faction of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the blast. Its spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said in a statement that Christians were the target. It was the third bombing in Pakistan in this month alone, a reminder that even as the military has cracked down on extremists over the past two years, Islamist groups remain a potent threat.

The Jamaat-e-Ahrar spokesman, Mr. Ehsan, said the bombing “was also to give a message to government that it cannot deter us even in their stronghold, Lahore.” Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province, is the hometown of Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif; his younger brother, Shahbaz Sharif, is the chief minister of the province.
Even though Pakistani officials rebutted the claim that Christians were the target, a large number of Christian families were in the park because of the Easter holiday, the local news media reported. The 67-acre park has walking paths, as well as rides for children.