Suspected suicide blast in Pakistan kills 30 people

SUSPECTED suicide attackers detonated a car bomb yesterday that destroyed a police building and sheared walls off a nearby office of Pakistan’s top intelligence service in Lahore. About 30 people were killed and at least 250 wounded.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the attack — one of the deadliest in Pakistan this year — could be retaliation for the government’s military offensive to rout Taliban militants from the north-western Swat Valley.

Recent assaults in Lahore have heightened fears that militancy in Pakistan is spreading well beyond the north-west region bordering Afghanistan.