Suicide bombers targeting the Pakistani military killed at least 39 people and wounded nearly 100 in the city of Lahore yesterday, officials said.
“Two suicide bombers attacked within the span of 15 to 20 seconds and they were on foot,” provincial police chief Tariq Saleem Dogar told reporters.
The dead in the attack in a military neighborhood of the city, which is near the border with India, included five soldiers, military officials said.
Militants have renewed pressure on unpopular Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
There have been five blasts this week alone, including a car bomb suicide attack on a police intelligence building in Lahore on Monday that killed 13 people, and a shooting and bombing at a US-based aid agency that killed six in the northwest.
A photographer said soldiers cordoned off the site of the blasts and were not allowing anyone to approach. Troops were also deployed on rooftops of houses. An army helicopter was flying over the area.
Police official Mohammad Shafiq told reporters the heads of both attackers had been found. Suicide bombers often strap explosives to their bodies and the blasts take off their heads.
Former British prime minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday urged so-called middle powers to become a “poisonous shrimp” to carve out strategic economic leverage in a more turbulent global environment. Sunak drew from a metaphor by former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀): A big fish will eat a smaller fish, and the smaller fish will eat the shrimp. Lee made the point a year after the Asian nation’s independence in 1966 that the city-state needed to build up its defense mechanisms — like a shrimp that stings — so it would be left alone by predators. “He was thinking about what Singapore’s
POLL POSITION: Democrats criticized the timing of the raid, saying that the US justice department historically avoids public investigations within 60 days of an election Federal agents on Monday searched the home of Democratic US Representative Ilhan Omar, a startling escalation in a criminal investigation that brings renewed focus to the frequent target of White House derision in the final weeks of her re-election bid. The search of the Minnesota congresswoman’s home so close to next month’s midterm contests that would determine control of the US House and the Senate was swiftly condemned by top Democrats in Congress, who raised questions about the timing given longstanding US Department of Justice (DOJ) protocol to avoid overt investigative steps involving political candidates in the direct run-up to an
A Rhode Island pumpkin grower appears to have broken the world record for the heaviest pumpkin, with his giant squash topping the record by nearly 136kg. Ron Wallace of Greene, Rhode Island, weighed his pumpkin on Saturday at a contest in New England and is waiting for the Guinness World Records to confirm he smashed the record, set about a week earlier by a grower in England. Wallace said he has been in contact with Guinness officials who say his record is on track to be verified. “It’s truly massive, it was a pleasure to grow,” Wallace said on Monday. Guinness World Records lists
BUILDUP: The report comes as Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi boosts defense spending in the face of China’s military expansion and the North Korean threat French defence contractor Thales will establish a maintenance and operational support base in Japan in what is seen as the first such move by a foreign firm in the country, a report said yesterday. Thales chairman and CEO Patrice Caine told the Nikkei business daily that the base “will mark a milestone toward Thales’ long-term engagement in Japan.” It is believed to be the first time a foreign defense company has established a dedicated base in Japan for the maintenance and operation of Japanese defense equipment, the Nikkei said. It added that Thales might also expand its Japan-based business to