Taliban suicide blasts kill 60 in Kabul, Lahore

A Taliban suicide attacker detonated a car bomb in the western part of Kabul yesterday, killing up to 35 people and wounding more than 40, government officials said, in one of the worst attacks in the Afghan capital in recent weeks.

Police cordoned off the area, located near the house of the deputy government Chief Executive Mohammad Mohaqiq in a part of the city where many of the mainly Shia Hazara community live.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

Yesterday's suicide bombing, which struck a bus carrying government employees, continued the unrelenting violence that has killed more than 1,700 civilians in Afghanistan so far this year.

The assault came as another suicide bomber killed at least 25 people, many of them police, in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore yesterday, 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.

KABUL BLAST

The Taliban, which is battling the Western-backed government and a Nato-led coalition for control of Afghanistan, has launched a wave of attacks around the country in recent days, sparking fighting in more than half a dozen provinces.

"I was in my shop when suddenly I heard a terrible sound and as a result all of my shop windows shattered," said Ali Ahmed, a resident in the area of yesterday's blast.

Acting Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danish said at least 24 people had been killed and 40 wounded but the casualty toll could rise further.

Another senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the incident with the media, said the toll stood at 35 killed. That was in line with a claim on Twitter by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, who said 37 "intelligence workers" had been killed.

Mujahid said in a tweet claiming responsibility for the attack the target had been two buses that had been under surveillance for two months.

Government security forces said a small bus owned by the Ministry of Mines had been destroyed in the blast but the National Directorate for Security, the main intelligence agency, said none of its personnel had been hit.

Three civilian vehicles and 15 shops were destroyed or damaged in the blast, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

LAHORE BLAST

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.

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