LAHORE, Pakistan — Teams of gunmen attacked three law-enforcement facilities in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore today, a major escalation in an audacious wave of terror strikes as this U.S.-allied, nuclear- armed country prepares for an offensive in a Taliban and al-Qaeda stronghold.
At least seven people died in a gunfight with police at one site, police said as the city plunged into chaos.
In the Taliban-riddled northwest, meanwhile, a suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle next to a police station, killing at least eight people, while a suspected U.S. missile strike killed four alleged militants, officials said.
“The enemy has started a guerrilla war,” Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik told a local television station.
One attack in Lahore occurred at a building housing the Federal Investigation Agency, a law-enforcement organization that deals with matters ranging from immigration to terrorism.
Senior government official Sajjad Bhutta said the attack lasted about 1 1/2 hours.
He said the dead included two attackers, four government employees and a bystander. Senior police official Chaudhry Shafiq said one of the dead wore a jacket bearing explosives.
Two other groups of attackers struck police facilities in the area Lahore’s outskirts in violence that continued, Shafiq said.
