ABDULLAH MUGHAL

LAHORE: At least 26 people, including nine policemen and a woman, were killed and 66 others injured in what police said a ‘targeted suicide attack’ at Kot Lakhpat vegetable market near Arfa Karim Software Technology Park on main Ferozepur Road here on Monday.

A spokesperson for the Punjab Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) said the banned outfit Jamaatul-ul-Ahrar (JuA), an offshoot of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement issued with an attached photograph of the bomber.

While talking to media, Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Lahore Amin Wains said the bomber targeted policemen who were providing security to the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) staff during an anti-encroachment drive near Arfa Karim Tower.

Soon after the incident, officials of police, Rangers and army reached the site and cordoned off the area. They collected forensic evidences from the blast site. Rescuers shifted the injured, most of them in critical condition, to various hospitals.

Talking to media, Deputy Inspector General of Police (Operations) Dr Haider Ashraf said it was a suicide attack which targeted police officers.

Talal Ishfaq, an eyewitness and a nearby trader, said he witnessed bodies in a pool of blood. “Flames were also rising from an exploded car,” he said, adding that police did not properly cordon off the rear area of crime scene which allowed people to gather there in large numbers. “Some people even climbed the roof of a building demolished by the blast,” he added. Aqeel Raza, another eyewitness, said many vehicles and buildings were damaged in the incident. After the incident, the provincial government temporarily suspended the Metro Bus services and deployed Rangers on its tracks with a view to avoiding any untoward incident. Meanwhile, people remained stuck in hours-long traffic gridlock on Ferozepur Road.

Reuters adds: A suicide bomber killed at least 25 people, many of them police, in Lahore on Monday, officials said, an attack which shattered a period of relative calm in Pakistan’s second-largest city.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack which wrought carnage near the Lahore Technology Park in the centre of the city. Police deployed to clear street vendors from the area had been targeted, a police official said.

“We suspect that he (the suicide bomber) came on a motorcycle and he rammed it into a police checkpoint,” Lahore police operations chief Haider Ashraf told Reuters.

Rescue workers shifted the wounded to hospital and police officers cordoned off the bomb site as army troops also arrived at the scene.

“The death toll we have now is 25 dead and 52 are wounded,” said Jam Sajjad Hussain, spokesman for the Rescue 1122 service. A wounded man sitting on the roadside was shown crying in pain on television amidst cars and motorcycles mangled by the blast.

The bombing was claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, in a message sent to the media by spokesman Muhammad Khurassani. The Pakistani Taliban are loosely allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents but focus their attacks on the Pakistani government.

Haider Ashraf, deputy inspector general of Punjab police, said the blast was a suicide attack and “police were the target”. Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said the majority of those killed and wounded were police and warned the death toll could rise.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the blast in a statement and directed medical efforts for those injured.

In early April, a suicide attack on an army census team that killed at least six people and wounded 18 in Lahore was also claimed by the Pakistani Taliban.

After a series of attacks in February, including two in Lahore that killed over 20 people, Pakistan’s powerful military began a nationwide crackdown on militants.