Pakistan backlash as death toll in volleyball bombing rises to 99

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PESHAWAR, Jan 3 (AFP): Pakistan authorities faced a furious backlash Sunday over security and medical failures after a suicide bomber killed 99 people at a volleyball match in one of the country's worst attacks.
Police rounded up dozens of suspects and authorities opened an investigation into poor medical care as doctors in the remote northwest struggled to treat the casualties, many of them lying on the hospital floor.
The suicide bomber rammed a car bomb into a crowd of men, women and children watching the tournament in Shah Hasan Khan village, a pro-government area in the district of Lakki Marwat, reducing a sporting event to carnage on Friday.
Police said the death toll had risen to 99, with 87 wounded being treated in three different hospitals, making it the third deadliest attack in a nearly three-year extremist campaign in the nuclear-armed Muslim country.
There were scenes of chaos Sunday at the hospital in the town of Lakki Marwat said they were short of medicine and beds, overwhelmed with casualties.
"Even now the injured are undergoing treatment on the hospital floor. Some have brought their own beds," Doctor Usman Ali said.
"My daughter died because of the poor facilities in the hospital. There was no bed, no medicine and not even the X-ray machine was working," shopkeeper Riaz Khatok told AFP from the hospital.
The local peace committee that organised the tournament and heads a local anti-Taliban militia, blamed the government for failing to prevent the attack.
"The security personnel at the checkpost didn't search the vehicle and the militants managed to hit us. They can target us again, the government should provide security for us," said Sher Ali Khan, one committee member.