Suicide bombings kill 15, wound 35 in Pakistan’s Lahore, second attack this week in the city

Suicide bombs kill 15, wound 35 in Pakistani city

LAHORE, Pakistan — A pair of suicide bombers targeting army vehicles detonated explosives within seconds of each other Friday, killing at least 15 people in this eastern city, police said. It was the fourth major attack in Pakistan this week, indicating Islamist militants are stepping up violence after a period of relative calm.

Six security personnel were among the dead, senior police official Chaudhry Mohammad Shafiq said.

The bombers, who were on foot, struck RA Bazaar, a residential and commercial neighborhood where several security agencies have facilities. Pakistani TV channels showed security forces swarming the area as bystanders rushed the injured into ambulances.

Eyewitness Afzal Awan said he saw several people, some missing limbs, lying in pools of blood after an enormous explosion.

“I saw smoke rising everywhere,” Awan told reporters. “A lot of people were crying.”

No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion quickly fell on the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida.

The militants are believed to have been behind scores of attacks in U.S.-allied Pakistan over the last several years, including a series of strikes that began in October and killed some 600 people in apparent retaliation for an army offensive along the Afghan border.

In more recent months, the attacks were smaller, fewer and confined to remote regions near Afghanistan.

But on Monday, a suicide car bomber struck a building in Lahore where police interrogated high-value suspects, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.

Also this week, suspected militants attacked the offices of World Vision, a U.S.-based Christian aid group, in the northwest district of Mansehra, killing six Pakistani employees, while a bombing at a small, makeshift movie theater in the main northwest city of Peshawar killed four people.

The violence comes amid signs of a Pakistani crackdown on Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida operatives using its soil. Among the militants known to have been arrested is the Afghan Taliban’s No. 2 commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

The U.S., meanwhile, has pursued al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in Pakistan’s northwest tribal belt using missile strikes. The Pakistani Taliban chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, is believed have died in one such strike in January, though the Taliban have denied that.

Militant attacks in Pakistan frequently target security forces, though civilian targets have not escaped.

During the bloody wave of attacks that began in October — coinciding with the army’s ground offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in the South Waziristan tribal area — Lahore was hit several times.

In mid-October, three groups of gunmen attacked three security facilities in the eastern city, a rampage that left 28 dead. Twin suicide bombings at a market there in December killed nearly 50 people.

Ahmed reported from Islamabad.