Quetta attack: Pakistan mourns as lawyers begin boycott

Pakistan is in a state of mourning after at least 70 people were killed in a suicide attack in Quetta

After blast targeting lawyers killed at least 70 people, legal community steps back to protest against security lapse.

Pakistan's top lawyers launched a nationwide strike on Tuesday, a day after a suicide attack on a large crowd of their colleagues killed at least 70 people in Balochistan.


As the country mourned the victims, which included many lawyers and two cameramen who were gathered at a hospital to pay respects to another lawyer who had been shot dead hours earlier, the lawyers said they would boycott court proceedings in much of the country.

Monday's attack at a hospital in the southwestern city of Quetta was one of the worst in the country's long battle against such violence.

Both a Pakistani Taliban faction - Jammat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) - and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) have claimed responsibility for the attack.