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Pakistan police targeted as attacks kill 15
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-10-15 13:36
LAHORE, Pakistan: Gunmen attacked police offices in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Thursday and a car bomb exploded outside another in the northwest, killing at least 15 people after a week of violence in which more than 100 people died. The attacks in Lahore in Pakistan's heartland province of Punjab and in Kohat in the northwest followed a pattern of destabilising assaults, including the storming of army headquarters, ahead of an impending military offensive against the Taliban in their south Waziristan stronghold.
One of the dead was a gunmen, a police official told reporters, adding that the building had been cleared of attackers. Gunmen also attacked a police training centre in Lahore but there was no word on casualties. Media had unconfirmed reports of a third attack in the city. A suicide car-bomber attacked the same FIA building in Lahore in March last year killing 21 people. Shortly before the attacks in Lahore, a suicide car bomber set off his explosives outside a police station in Kohat killing 10 people, police and military officials said. "Some school children are among the dead," a policeman at the scene said. Pakistan's government has said a ground offensive against an estimated 10,000 hard core Taliban is imminent in South Waziristan. The government says most attacks in the country -- including four major ones since October 5 that killed more than 100 people -- are plotted in South Waziristan on the Afghan border. |
