Suicide bombers kill 24 in Pakistan

Two massive suicide bombs destroyed a police headquarters and a business in Pakistan today killing at least 24 people and wounding more than 200.

A girl of three was among the victims when the first blast tore the front from Lahore’s Federal Investigation Agency and damaged scores of nearby homes.

City police chief Malik Mohammed Iqbal said an explosives-packed car was detonated next to the building which houses an anti-terrorist department.

The blast knocked out the walls of several offices and part of a stairwell.

Twenty-one people were killed, including 16 police, officials said. More than 200 people were wounded.

Doctors at Lahore hospitals said the dead included the three-year-old, and 32 other girls were injured by flying debris at a nearby school.

The second explosion came 15 minutes and 15 miles away at the office of an advertising agency in a residential district.

Police said two children and the wife of the house’s gardener were killed.

The attacks come amid a spate of violence that authorities are blaming on Taliban and al-Qaida militants, moving from their strongholds along the Afghan border.

Until recently, Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital, had been spared the suicide attacks that have struck all other major cities in the past year.

But now it has suffered three attacks within two months. On January 10, a militant walked into a crowd of police guarding a courthouse and blew himself up, killing 24 people. Last week a double suicide attack in Lahore killed four people at a navy training college.

As the victors of last month’s elections prepare to form a new government, the party of former premier Nawaz Sharif which is set to be the junior partner in the coalition, blamed the attacks on military operations ordered by President Pervez Musharraf.

“He has carried out indiscriminate operations in the tribal areas that have opened up new fault lines in Pakistani society,” a party spokesman said.

Mr Musharraf condemned the bombings and said they would not halt the government’s resolve to fight the scourge of terrorism.

After the attacks, small groups of residents enraged by the bombing gathered on Lahore’s main Mall Road, chanting “Musharraf is a dog, Musharraf is a pimp.”

Tariq Pervez, the director-general of the Federal Investigation Agency, said it had earlier received information that it could be attacked, but the reports had pointed to a strike against its headquarters in the capital, Islamabad, not in Lahore.

The attacks were the first major acts of terrorism since Mr Sharif’s and the late Benazir Bhutto’s parties announced over the weekend that they would form a coalition government after routing Mr Musharraf’s allies in parliamentary elections.

The parties are vowing to restore judges axed by Mr Musharraf to secure his own re-election last year setting them on a collision course with the president.