Police opened an investigation into twin suicide attacks in Pakistan's cultural capital that killed 24 people ahead of a transfer of power to followers of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, a top investigator said yesterday.
The bombings in Lahore on Tuesday were the first major acts of terrorism since former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party announced over the weekend they would form a coalition government aimed at reducing the powers of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
The blasts happened about 15 minutes apart in different districts of Lahore, Sharif's stronghold. The first tore the facade from the seven-story Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) building as staff were beginning their work day.
Yesterday, Tasadaq Hussain, a senior police investigator, said police collected remains of the two suicide attackers and efforts were under way to trace and capture those who orchestrated the attacks.
He provided no further details.
Lahore Police Chief Malik Mohammed Iqbal said an explosives-packed vehicle managed to penetrate security, drive into a parking lot and detonate close to the FIA building -- which houses part of the federal police's anti-terrorism unit -- devastating offices on the lower floors and blowing out the walls around a stairwell.
Grainy footage from a surveillance camera shown on the private Aaj television channel showed the small truck running over a guard and barreling through the gate seconds before the blast.
While al-Qaeda-linked militants in Iraq have regularly used vehicles to launch massive attacks on buildings, such damage has rarely been inflicted on a government building in Pakistan.
Also yesterday, two bomb disposal experts died in the northwestern valley of Swat while defusing a bomb they found on a road, said Mohib Ullah, a local police official. He said they were dispatched to the area after residents alerted police about the bomb.
Musharraf quickly condemned Tuesday's bombings.
The president said in a statement the government would continue to fight terrorism "with full force."
But some enraged Lahore residents blamed Musharraf. They gathered in small groups on Tuesday on the city's main Mall Road, chanting "Musharraf is a dog! Musharraf is a pimp!"
In addition to the 24 killed, officials said more than 200 people were wounded. Doctors at Lahore hospitals said the dead included a three-year-old girl and that 32 girls were injured by flying debris at a nearby Roman Catholic elementary school.
The second blast all but flattened the office of an advertising agency in the affluent Model Town neighborhood about 24km away. Police said two children and the wife of the house's gardener were killed in that explosion.
Officials declined to speculate about whether the Lahore residence of Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, located less than 50m away, was the intended target of the attack.
Musharraf is expected to transfer power to the new government this month.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I