Five small bombs exploded outside two theaters in a major eastern Pakistani city, but there were no casualties, police said.
The explosions late on Friday spurred panic in Lahore, a cultural hub that has largely escaped the scores of suicide and other bomb attacks that have bedeviled Pakistan in the past two years.
Police investigator Mushtaq Sukhera said religious extremists were behind these and other similar attacks.
“The group [of extremists] believes that these places are centers of anti-Islamic activities and spread obscenity,” he said, declining to identify the group. “We have enough evidence from our investigation of previous such attacks.”
The first four blasts occurred near the al-Falah Theater, which is also close to the Punjab provincial assembly building, senior police official Haider Ashraf said. He described them as “locally made, low-intensity timed devices.”
The fifth explosion occurred outside another theater almost 3km away.
“It was yet another low-intensity bomb blast outside Tamaseel Theater,” police official Chaudhry Mohammad Shafiq said.
Lahore’s top district government official Sajjad Ahmed Bhutta said “it seems to be an attempt to hurt the cultural activities of the city.”
Police said there were no casualties.
Television footage of the latest blasts showed ambulances rushing to the scene and people running through the area. At least one small blast was caught on camera, apparently occurring at the main gate of the al-Falah theater.
Mian Nadeem, who works in an office of a private company nearby, said he rushed downstairs after hearing the first explosion near al-Falah.
“Then, there were three more blasts, one after the other,” he said. “Everybody ran in frenzy. It was panic everywhere.”
Witness Sultan Ahmed said artists were rehearsing inside the second theater when the last bomb exploded.
“They all ran through the parking area near the back gate,” Ahmed said.
Meanwhile, police said at least nine people have been killed in clashes between supporters from two rival Muslim sects in northwestern Pakistan.
Police official Zarin Khan said more than a dozen other people were injured in the multiple shootings in Hangu district. The district has been the scene of sectarian violence in the past.
Khan said the latest unrest erupted on Friday and continued yesterday.
Khan didn’t say what sparked the violence but said authorities were trying to restore order.
Most of Pakistan’s majority Sunni and minority Shiites live peacefully, but extremists on both sides often target each other’s leaders.
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
EXTRADITION FEARS: The legislative changes come five years after a treaty was suspended in response to the territory’s crackdown on democracy advocates Exiled Hong Kong dissidents said they fear UK government plans to restart some extraditions with the territory could put them in greater danger, adding that Hong Kong authorities would use any pretext to pursue them. An amendment to UK extradition laws was passed on Tuesday. It came more than five years after the UK and several other countries suspended extradition treaties with Hong Kong in response to a government crackdown on the democracy movement and its imposition of a National Security Law. The British Home Office said that the suspension of the treaty made all extraditions with Hong Kong impossible “even if
Former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, best known for making a statement apologizing over World War II, died yesterday aged 101, officials said. Murayama in 1995 expressed “deep remorse” over the country’s atrocities in Asia. The statement became a benchmark for Tokyo’s subsequent apologies over World War II. “Tomiichi Murayama, the father of Japanese politics, passed away today at 11:28am at a hospital in Oita City at the age of 101,” Social Democratic Party Chairwoman Mizuho Fukushima said. Party Secretary-General Hiroyuki Takano said he had been informed that the former prime minister died of old age. In the landmark statement in August 1995, Murayama said
RSS