Police in Lahore, Pakistan have made 17 arrests after raids that broke out late Wednesday, according to CNN.
The suspects arrested have links to the Easter bombing terrorist attacks that killed 74 people and injured at least 362 others.
More arrests are expected to follow, and police are working with local intelligence agencies to find more suspects.
“We are keeping count of every drop of the blood of our martyrs,” Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said, and thanks to the attack, he has canceled his visit to the United States. “We will not rest until the cost of this blood is avenged.”
The attack on Sunday was intended to kill Christians, as they were celebrating the Easter holiday in the Gulshan Iqbal park. In the attacks, 24 of the 74 dead victims were children.
A division of the Pakistani Taliban, Jamaat ul Ahrar, took responsibility for the attacks.
According to Sharif, terrorists will not “play with Pakistani lives” and will not interfere with daily life or state affairs. Even though only two percent of the population is made up of Christians, they are still Pakistani, and this was an attack that shook the entire country, not just the small Christian population.
This is unfortunately not the first terrorist attack that has taken place in Pakistan. In Lahore just last year, suicide bombers killed at least 14 Christian community members and injured many others. They also struck a church in Peshawar back in 2013 which led to at least 80 people dead.
The terrorist attack in Pakistan was extremely close to the one that took place in Brussels, which also killed and injured many people.
“My son was hurt here,” the father of Aman John and uncle of Sahil, two children killed in the attack, said. “My nephew Sahil was also hurt right there. It’s just that the bleeding wouldn’t stop.”
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