Teams of gunmen attacked three law enforcement facilities across the eastern city of Lahore yesterday, paralyzing Pakistan’s cultural capital, while a car bomb devastated a northwestern police station, killing a total of 38 people in an escalating wave of terror in this nuclear-armed US ally.
Another bombing in the northwestern city of Peshawar later in the day wounded five people, further rattling the country.
The bloodshed, aimed at scuttling a planned offensive into the militant heartland along the Afghan border, highlights the militants’ ability to carry out sophisticated strikes on heavily fortified facilities and exposes the failure of the intelligence agencies to adequately infiltrate the extremist cells.
No group immediately claimed responsibility.
The attacks yesterday were the latest to underscore the growing threat to Punjab, the province next to India where the Taliban are believed to have made inroads and linked up with local insurgent outfits.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said the bloodshed that has engulfed the country over the past 11 days would not deter the government from its mission to eliminate the violent extremists, according to a statement on the state-run news agency.
“The enemy has started a guerrilla war,” Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said. “The whole nation should be united against these handful of terrorists, and God willing we will defeat them.”
The wave of violence practically shut down daily life in Lahore. All government offices were ordered shut, the roads were nearly empty, major markets did not open and stores that had been open pulled down their shutters.
The assaults began just after 9am when a group of gunmen attacked a building housing the Federal Investigation Agency, a law enforcement branch that deals with matters ranging from immigration to terrorism.
Soon after, a second band of gunmen raided a police training school in Manawan on the outskirts of the city in a brief attack that killed nine police officers and four militants, police and hospital officials said. One of the gunmen was killed by police at the compound and the other three blew themselves up.
A third team of at least eight gunmen scaled the back wall of an elite police commando training center not far from the airport and attacked the facility, Lahore police chief Pervez Rathore said.
A family barricaded itself in a room in a house, while the attackers stood on the roof, shooting at security forces and throwing grenades, said Lieutenant General Shafqat Ahmad, the top military official in Lahore.
Two attackers were slain in the gunbattle and three blew themselves up, he said. One police nursing assistant and a civilian also died in the attack, he said.
In the northwest, meanwhile, a suicide car bomb exploded next to a police station in the Saddar area of Kohat, collapsing half the building and killing 11 people — three police officers and eight civilians — Kohat police chief Abdullah Khan said.
Early yesterday evening, a bomb planted in a car outside a home in the Gulshan Rehman area of Peshawar city exploded, city police chief Ijaz Khan said. A nearby school was closed at the time. Local police official Aalam Sher said five wounded people were hospitalized.
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