July 14
More than 130 people have been killed and dozens more critically injured in a bombing at an election campaign rally in a remote region of Pakistan, an attack that hurled the country deep into political chaos.
Officials blamed a suicide bomber for the killings of at least 132 people and said the death toll could rise further.
The bombing happened on Friday, local time, the day former prime minister Nawaz Sharif made a dramatic return to Pakistan aboard a commercial plane and was immediately taken into custody along with his daughter on corruption charges.
Critics accused the army of failing to provide security after the bomber blew himself up at an election event in south-western Pakistan.
Two of Pakistan’s most popular political figures, Sharif and his daughter Maryam – his political heir – were arrested by anti-corruption police at the airport in the eastern city of Lahore moments after they arrived from London, where Sharif’s wife is in a hospital receiving treatment for lymphoma.
As hundreds of their supporters confronted anti-riot police half a mile from the Lahore airport, the Sharifs were flown aboard a small plane to the capital, Islamabad, where a judge ordered them transferred to prison.