Over 100 lawyers ransack hospital in Pakistani city, 3 patients die
Three patients have died in an incident where more than 100 lawyers ransacked a hospital to avenge an assault by doctors there on a fellow advocate in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore.
Zulfikar Hameed, the Lahore city police chief, said the mob smashed windowpanes, doors and equipment at the cardiac hospital on Wednesday. They also set several vehicles on fire.
Ashraf Nizami, a hospital doctor, said the attackers forced doctors and nurses to flee, leaving patients in emergency and intensive care unattended. “It was catastrophic for hours.”
Some the protesters, Nizami added, fired gunshots and pelted the police officers arriving at the scene with stones and bricks.
Among the dead was a 70-year-old female patient, he said.
Local Pakistani media reports, citing credible sources, confirmed the deaths.
Several lawyers were also arrested.
Kamran Ali, a government official in Lahore, said the lawyers were enraged over the beating by doctors of a lawyer at the hospital over his refusal to get in a line of patients. He said the lawyers were particularly angry about the doctors disseminating a mobile phone video on social media showing the beating.
The office of Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has launched an investigation into the incident.
Khan’s spokesman Nadeem Afzal Chan condemned the assault. “It is a shame that some people would go and attack a hospital.”
This is not the first time that lawyers and doctors have clashed in Lahore.
Last month, police registered a case against doctors and paramedics for allegedly torturing and injuring some lawyers on the premises of the hospital. The lawyers claimed they were “tortured” for complaining about delayed treatment to a patient.
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