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LAHORE, Pakistan: At least 22 Pakistani riot police were killed in a
suicide bomb attack outside the high court in the commercial heart
of Lahore on Thursday, officers said.
The bomber set off his device when police asked
him to stop his motorcycle outside the court, in the latest in a
wave of suicide attacks which have claimed hundreds of lives across
Pakistan over the past year.
Up to 60 people, many of them police officers,
were rushed to hospital after the explosion in the city’s main
commercial district.
The bodies of at least 11 dead police officers,
dressed in full riot gear with protective vests and helmets, were
seen lying side-by-side where they had fallen in a small area around
the wreckage of the bombers’ motorcycle.
“At least 22 policemen have been martyred. The
final toll may go up,” Aftab Cheema, senior superintendent of
police in Lahore, told AFP.
Wounded officers, some with their clothes
apparently blown off by the force of the blast, lay in the street
screaming for help as security forces scrambled to cordon off the
downtown area.
Police said the head of the suspected suicide
bomber had been found about 100 meters (330 feet) from the blast
site, which was littered with the dead and wounded.
The blast ripped through a busy square in front
of the Lahore High Court as the riot police were gathering ahead of
a protest by lawyers against the rule of President Pervez Musharraf.
“A man came on a motorcycle and police stopped
him when he approached the police post, he blew himself up,”
Cheema said.
Thursday’s attack is the first suicide bombing
in Lahore, a relatively prosperous and secure city of about seven
million people in Punjab province, since the wave of attacks began
last year.
The unrest has fueled international fears for
the stability of the nuclear-armed Islamic republic, a strategic US
ally in the “war on terror,” ahead of crucial general elections
set for February 18.
The polls were delayed for six weeks after the
assassination of Bhutto, a passionate defender of secular democracy
whose murder at an election rally sparked days of deadly rioting
across the country.
-- AFP
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