Suicide attack kills 30 in Lahore

LAHORE, Pakistan - A suicide squad using guns, grenades and a van packed with explosives targeted police and Pakistan's intelligence agency yesterday, killing 30 and wounding 250 in an assault seen as revenge for the month-old army campaign against the Taliban in the Swat Valley.

The midmorning blast on a crowded street damaged an area nearly as big as a city block, mangling cars, spraying bricks in all directions, and leaving behind a sizable crater. Most of the dead and injured were civilians.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said militants were striking out because they were losing the fight with government forces battling to uproot extremists in the valley and the tribal areas in the northwest near Afghanistan.

"I believe that anti-Pakistan elements, who want to destabilize our country and see defeat in Swat, have now turned to our cities," Malik said.

A group calling itself Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab claimed responsibility for the bombing in a Turkish-language communique posted on Turkish jihadist Web sites, saying the attack was related to the fight in Swat, according to SITE Intelligence Group. The claim could not be verified, and the group's relationship to the Taliban was unclear.

Washington and other Western allies back the Swat campaign and see it as a test of the government's resolve to combat the spread of extremism in Pakistan.

The attack in Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest city, was far from the restive Afghan border region where the Taliban has established strongholds from which, officials say, its fighters have launched attacks on Western forces in Afghanistan.

It was the third deadly assault since March in Lahore, the intellectual and cultural heart of the Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province. Before March, it had largely escaped the violence that has plagued many parts of the country, but officials now fear militants may be choosing targets there to make the point that no place is beyond their reach.

Officials said three suspects had been detained.

Police and government officials described a coordinated assault on a compound that included several government buildings, including a Punjab provincial government office, a police emergency call center, and buildings housing the Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

A white van pulled up in a narrow street separating the police and ISI buildings, police officer Sohail Sakheera said. Two gunmen stepped out from the van, took cover behind concrete barriers protecting the buildings, and opened fire - one on the ISI building, the other at the police building. A grenade was lobbed at the ISI building, he said.

A driver remained in the van.

Security guards returned fire and the fighting lasted several minutes, until ISI sharpshooters hit one of the attackers. A huge explosion then erupted as the bomb was detonated.

"The moment the blast happened, everything went dark in front of my eyes," witness Muhammad Ali said.

The police building collapsed, crushing some officers and trapping others. Walls were sheared off the ISI building. The ceilings of several operating rooms in a nearby hospital fell in, injuring 20 people.

A crater several yards in diameter and several feet deep marked the exact spot of the blast, which provincial government official Sajjad Bhutta said was caused by 220 pounds of explosive.

Raja Riaz, a senior provincial government minister, said about 30 people were killed and at least 250 wounded. Officials said 15 police and several intelligence agents were among the dead. The remainder of the dead and the bulk of the wounded were civilians caught in the blast or hit by shrapnel.

The police building appeared to catch the brunt of the explosion, but one expert said the ISI headquarters was likely the main target.

U.S. officials and others in the past have accused the ISI of links to militant groups, including the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the secretive agency has also been responsible for capturing and interrogating senior al-Qaeda figures and collecting intelligence that helps the military's campaign against militants in the border region.