A suicide car bomb attack yesterday flattened a police building in Lahore, killing 23 people in what the government called 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 that has killed more than 1,800 people across Pakistan in less than two years.
Up to five attackers opened fire and threw grenades before a van packed with explosives blew up outside an emergency response building beside the provincial headquarters of Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, police said.
PHOTO: EPA
Two of the attackers were inside the vehicle but 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 more than 300 people were wounded.
“I heard firing and then a huge blast,” said one policeman who staggered out of the rubble, saying that there were 30 to 35 policemen inside.
“The wall collapsed on me. I was trapped in the wreckage and fell unconscious,” said an elderly man, speaking to reporters from his hospital bed.
Rescue workers ferried out the injured on their backs while people tried to dig out one man in a traditional white shirt who lay trapped and helpless under stones and wooden planks.
The blast, which some witnesses likened to an earthquake, damaged nearby buildings in the security nerve center of Lahore, two months after a deadly assault on a police academy near the eastern city claimed by the Taliban.
“The initial investigation shows that the attackers first fired at the police and security pickets at the corner of the building and then an explosives-laden Toyota van blew up,” Lahore police chief Pervaiz Rathore said.
The Inter-Services Intelligence building was partly damaged and an intelligence officer was killed in the blast, one security official told reporters.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
LONG FLIGHT: The jets would be flown by US pilots, with Taiwanese copilots in the two-seat F-16D variant to help familiarize them with the aircraft, the source said The US is expected to fly 10 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 70/72 jets to Taiwan over the coming months to fulfill a long-awaited order of 66 aircraft, a defense official said yesterday. Word that the first batch of the jets would be delivered soon was welcome news to Taiwan, which has become concerned about delays in the delivery of US arms amid rising military tensions with China. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the initial tranche of the nation’s F-16s are rolling off assembly lines in the US and would be flown under their own power to Taiwan by way
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS