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Suicide bombs kill 45 and wound over 100 in Lahore
At least six security personnel were among the dead, senior police official Chaudhry Mohammad Shafiq said.
The bombers, who were on foot, struck RA Bazaar, a residential and commercial neighborhood where several security agencies have facilities. Pakistani TV channels showed security forces swarming the area as bystanders rushed the injured into ambulances.
Senior police official Tariq Saleem Dogar said 45 people were killed, and over 100 were hurt. Some of the wounded were missing limbs, lying in pools of blood after the enormous explosions, eyewitness Afzal Awan said.
“I saw smoke rising everywhere,” Awan told reporters. “A lot of people were crying.”
No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion quickly fell on the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The militants are believed to have been behind scores of attacks in US-allied Pakistan over the last several years, including a series of strikes that began in October and lasted around three months, killing some 600 people in apparent retaliation for an army offensive along the Afghan border.
In more recent months, the attacks were smaller, fewer and confined to remote regions near Afghanistan. But on Monday, a suicide car bomber struck a building in Lahore where police interrogated high-value suspects -- including militants -- killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.
Also this week, suspected militants attacked the offices of World Vision, a US-based Christian aid group, in the northwest district of Mansehra, killing six Pakistani employees, while a bombing at a small, makeshift movie theater in the main northwest city of Peshawar killed four people.
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