30 People Killed, 250 Injured in a Lahore Suicide Bombing Attack Against Pakistani Intelligence Agency

Official: Car bombing kills 30 in Pakistan

AP – By Babar Dogar, Associated Press Writer

Wed May 27, 2009

LAHORE, Pakistan –

Gunmen detonated a car bomb Wednesday near police and intelligence agency offices that collapsed one building and sheared the walls off others in one of the deadliest attacks in Pakistan this year. About 30 people were killed and at least 250 wounded.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the bombing could be retaliation for the government's military offensive to rout Taliban fighers from the northwestern Swat Valley.

Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest city, sits near the Indian border and is considered a liberal, cultural capital. Assaults there have heightened fears that militancy in nuclear-armed Pakistan is spreading well beyond the northwest region bordering Afghanistan. Wednesday's attack was the third major strike in Lahore in recent months.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the latest bombing. Police said two suspects were detained.

Raja Riaz, a senior minister in the Punjab provincial government, told reporters about 30 people were killed. Sajjad Bhutta, another senior government official, told reporters more than 250 people were wounded.

A police building collapsed in the blast, and rescuers rushed to free officers buried in the rubble.

The explosion also sheared the walls off neighboring buildings in a main business district. The ceilings of operating rooms in a nearby hospital also collapsed, injuring 20 people.

Agents from the Inter-Services Intelligence agency were among the dead, a senior official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

"The moment the blast happened, everything went dark in front of my eyes," witness Muhammad Ali said. "The way the blast happened, then gunfire, it looked as if there was a battle going on."

Sajjad Bhutta, a senior government official in Lahore, told reporters a car carrying several gunmen pulled up on a street between offices of the emergency police and the intelligence agency, Pakistan's premier spy organization.

"As some people came out from that vehicle and started firing at the ISI office, the guards from inside that building returned fire," he said. As the shooting continued, the car exploded, he said.

Police had little chance to react to the gunshots before the blast.

"All of a sudden we heard a loud sound and the roof collapsed on us," said Mohammad Rehman, a police official who was wounded and taken to a nearby hospital. "First of all though, we heard the sound of gunfire, then the blast occurred."

Malik blamed the attack on Taliban fighters that government forces are fighting in the Swat Valley and the border region.

"They are anti-state elements, and after being defeated in Swat, they have moved to our big cities," Malik told the Express news channel.

President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the attack and said in a statement the government remained committed to rooting out terrorism.

The offensive in Swat is seen as a test of the government's resolve to combat the spread of Taliban, and is strongly backed by Washington and Pakistan's other Western allies. The army has said at least 1,100 fighters have been killed in the month-long operation and that Taliban fighters are in retreat.

The military on Wednesday said troops had cleared militants out of Piochar, a village in a remote part of Swat that is the rear base for Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah, and predicted that Mingora, the largest town in the valley, would be cleared of militants within three days.

Two other areas, Sultanwas and Mohmand, had also been emptied of militants and were now safe enough for refugees who have fled the fighting to return home.

It was the first time the military has invited some of the more than 2 million refugees from the region to return to their villages since the fighting began, setting off an exodus that aid officials have warned could turn into a humanitarian disaster.

In March, a group of gunmen attacked Sri Lanka's visiting cricket team in the heart of the city, killing six police officers and a driver and wounding several players.

Later that month, gunmen raided a police academy on the city's outskirts, leaving at least 12 dead during an eight-hour standoff with security forces, including army troops. Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud claimed responsibility.

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Associated Press writer Munir Ahmad contributed to this report from Islamabad.

Suicide car bomb kills 23 in Pakistan

by Arif Ali Arif Ali – Wed May 27, 2009, 5:30 am ET

LAHORE, Pakistan (AFP) –

A suicide car bomb attack flattened a police building in Pakistan's city of Lahore, killing 23 people in what the government branded revenge for an offensive against the Taliban.

The blast -- the third deadly attack to rock the country's liberal cultural capital in as many months -- points to a widening net of Islamist violence which has killed more than 1,800 people across Pakistan in less than two years.

At least two attackers in a vehicle packed with explosives tried to ram a barrier outside the police emergency response unit, adjacent to the provincial headquarters of Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, officials said.

The assailants opened fire at the security guards but they failed to storm the checkpoint, instead hitting the barrier, exploding into a ball of fire on the road and flattening the building, police and administration officials said.

Authorities said 250 people were wounded in the attack.

"I heard firing and then a huge blast," said one policeman who staggered out of the rubble, saying that there were 30-35 policemen inside.

"The building collapsed. I was at the back of the building and am fortunately alive," he told reporters.

Rescue workers ferried out the injured on their backs, stumbling over the debris, while people tried to dig out one man in a traditional white shirt who lay trapped and helpless under stones and wooden planks.

The force of the explosion damaged a petrol station and nearby buildings in the heart of Lahore's commercial district, two months after a deadly assault on a police academy near Lahore claimed by the Taliban.

"It was a suicide car bomb attack," police official Omar Ahmad told AFP.

There was no immediate claim for the blast but immediate suspicion fell on Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked groups as the authorities branded the attack revenge for its latest offensive against the in the northwest.

"Enemies of Pakistan who want to destabilise the country are coming here after their defeat in Swat," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters.

"There is a war and this is a war for our survival," he added.

Pakistan's military has been locked in a one-month offensive against Taliban militants in three regions of the northwest, which the authorities say has killed around 1,190 extremists and sent 2.4 million people fleeing their homes.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the blast and blamed "state enemies" for the carnage, as he expressed his condolences for the loss of life.

The chief of Lahore's city administration, Sajjad Bhutta, said 23 people were killed in the attack and around 250 others wounded.

"A vehicle bomb exploded just outside the police rescue offices, destroying the office, damaging nearby buildings and injuring people," he told reporters.

Local television showed images of frantic crowds gathering around the destroyed buildings, as volunteers picked through the rubble and twisted metal. The windows of a nearby hospital were also blown out, witnesses said.

Cars were flattened, with rows of charred motorcycles knocked down or destroyed by the explosion.

Police sub-inspector Khalid Baig said some policemen managed to escape with injuries, but that around 30 to 35 policemen had been trapped under the debris.

Lahore has been increasingly rocked by violent attacks.

On March 30, attackers armed with guns, grenades and suicide vests stormed a police training centre on the outskirts of the city, unleashing eight hours of gun battles and killing seven police cadets and a civilian.

That attack was claimed by Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud -- a man with a five-million-dollar bounty on his head offered by the United States -- who threatened to carry out further attacks across the country.

On March 3, gunmen ambushed the Sri Lankan cricket team bus in Lahore on its way to a test match with Pakistan that left eight Pakistanis dead and ended hopes of the country hosting international sport in the immediate future.