At least 30 people were killed and several others injured in an attack today on the office of the police rescue service in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore.
“The intensity of the blast was severe and gunfire was also heard,” Mohmammad Asif Mesam, a spokesman for Edhi Foundation, which runs the biggest ambulance service, said by telephone from Lahore.
The police building was razed to the ground in the explosion, Mesam said. An adjacent office of a government intelligence agency also was destroyed in the attack, he said.
Footage on local television channels showed the rubble of the collapsed building, several wrecked cars and ambulances arriving at the site of the explosion.
Today’s explosion was the first major terrorist attack in Pakistan since the military began an offensive against Taliban militants in the northwestern Swat Valley.
Human Rights Watch warned Tuesday that unless the government relaxes a curfew and allows food, water and medicine into the valley where 200,000 civilians are trapped, there will be a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
At least 1,150 militants and 60 soldiers have been killed since the operation began on April 26.
On Tuesday, Pakistan’s supreme court ruled that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the nation’s most popular politician, can participate in elections despite an earlier ban. The ruling is likely to ease political tensions in the short term but could ultimately pose a challenge for President Asif Ali Zardari, who is Sharif’s main rival and whose own popularity has plummeted. Elections are not due until 2013.
The Washington Post contributed to this story.
