69 killed, hundreds injured in Easter bombing in Pakistan

On Sunday, March 27, 2016, a bomb exploded at a neighborhood park in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 69 people and injuring more than 341 others. Many of the victims were women and children.
It was Easter Sunday, and the attack was aimed at Christians, according to CNN.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, or the Party of Freedom Fighters — a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban — claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter, BBC reports. A spokesman for the group, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said the attack was targeting those who claim Christianity — a minority consisting of only 2 percent of the Pakistani population, many of whom were gathering at Gulshan-e-Iqbal park to celebrate Easter peaceably, according to CNN.
“Let (Pakistan Prime Minister) Nawaz Sharif know that this war has now reached the doorstep of his home,” Ehsan said on Twitter on March 29. “God willing, the winners of this war will be the righteous holy warriors.”
This was the not the first attack by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar. In February 2014, the group claimed responsibility for the beheading of 23 Pakistani parliament soldiers, and on Feb. 18, 2015, a member of the faction set off a bomb in front of a hotel in Lahore, Pakistan, injuring a half-dozen people and setting several cars on fire, according to BBC.
Sophomores Graeme Gastineau and Jordan McDonald are traveling to Turkey this summer with Global Outreach as a part of a mission work internship, and despite hearing reports like these from neighboring territories, they say that they have very little fear for their own safety.
McDonald said he recently received word that several military families were being sent home from southeastern Turkey for safety reasons, but rather than letting this fuel his fear, McDonald said he was primarily concerned that this news would prevent him from traveling there this summer.
“I understood the risks when I chose to go Turkey, and I understood that Turkey is located in a more dangerous part of the world,” McDonald said.
Gastineau said that much of the fear people have stems from a lack of knowledge, as well as possibly a lack of conviction.
“When fear steps in the way of God’s perfect will and becomes the driving force in our life … then we have got a major problem,” Gastineau said. “The gospel is for all people, and no matter what those people do to us and despite the way in which they try to control us, we must respond and react in love and submission. Even if that means death.”