LAHORE, 12 March 2008 — Thirty people were killed and 175 injured yesterday in two separate suicide bombings in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, said police officials.
Suicide attackers detonated two huge truck bombs, partly demolishing a police building and deepening a security crisis facing the new government.
The blasts, one targeting the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) headquarters and the other an advertising firm, were the latest in a wave of violence that has killed more than 600 people this year.
They also prompted the Australian cricket team to cancel an upcoming tour to Pakistan, citing security fears.
“I have never seen such a deadly suicide attack,” FIA chief Tariq Pervez told reporters outside the badly damaged eight-story FIA headquarters in the heart of the city.
There were warnings that the agency’s offices would be targeted “but we were not expecting it in Lahore,” he said, adding that up to 50 kilos of explosives were used.
“We believe the suicide attacker came in a vehicle and hit the reception counter. We have recovered only a few pieces of the car which was used in the attack,” Babur Bakht Qureshi, a senior police official, added.
“There was blood everywhere. I also saw mutilated limbs and body parts scattered around the reception area of the building,” said lawyer Wali Mohammed Khan, who was on the second floor of the building when the blast occurred.
Pools of blood and pieces of human flesh lay strewn outside the building. Several children at two nearby schools run by Christian missionaries were wounded by flying glass, police said. The FIA mainly deals with immigration and people smuggling but the building also housed the offices of a special US-trained unit created to counter terrorism, security officials said.
‘Al-Qaeda-Style Bombing’: Official
“This is an Al-Qaeda-style bombing, like we see in North Africa and Iraq,” an FIA official said, adding that security camera footage showing the bomber’s pick-up ramming the building was being examined.
The second attack, by a suicide bomber in the same make of truck, hit an advertising agency in an upscale Lahore neighborhood, the Interior Ministry said.
It was not immediately clear why the firm was targeted but the office is near the Lahore home of Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
President Pervez Musharraf, a key US ally in the “war on terror,” condemned the “savage act” and said the “acts of terrorism cannot deter the government’s resolve to fight the scourge with full force,” state media reported.
The explosions come a week after two suicide bombers struck a naval college in Lahore, killing at least five people, in the third attack to hit the previously calm city this year.
— With input from agencies
