26 killed in suicide bombing in Pakistan

Font Size -

Associated Press

Posted online: Thursday , January 10, 2008 at 12:00:00
Updated: Thursday , January 10, 2008 at 06:32:28

Lahore, January 10: At least 22 Pakistani riot policemen were among 26 people killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up near the Lahore High Court on Thursday, minutes before a planned anti government protest march by lawyers.

The blast in the eastern Punjab province capital also left more than 70 people injured, two weeks after former Premier Benazir Bhutto was killed in a gun and suicide attack in Rawalpindi.

"It was a suicide attack," said Malik Iqbal, police chief of Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province of Pakistan, adding police were "definitely" targeted.

He said the attacker was on foot and detonated his explosives at 11.45 am (local time) on a busy thoroughfare near a police picket at the General Post Office Chowk close to the Lahore High Court ahead of the lawyers' protest march to press for reinstatement of judges sacked during last year's emergency.

A red alert was sounded in Pakistan's four provinces in the wake of the blast and security was stepped up around key government buildings and vital installations in the federal capital of Islamabad and the nearby garrison city of Rawalpindi.

Four passers-by and 22 policemen died in the blast. The condition of 15 of the injured was described as critical.

Interior ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema also said the policemen were the target of the suicide bomber.

Around 100 riot policemen had been deployed at the square as lawyers were planning to organise a protest march seeking reinstatement of deposed judges.

The lawyers were holding a meeting inside the Lahore High Court building at the time of the blast and were safe, witnesses said. The protest was put off following the blast.

Bookmark this Page

What is this?

Digg

On Digg, users share intersting online content by submitting links to the site. At that point, the Digg audience can vote on whether or not they think it is interesting. Articles with lots of votes, or "diggs," rise up higher on the site's main page and topical subsection pages. Another form of social sharing, this site also lets users categorize the content they are submitting to Digg and label it with descriptions of up to 350 characters. Digg users can also submit comments on each content item submitted to the site.

To register, go to: http://digg.com/register

del.icio.us

At its most basic level, del.icio.us allows users to save their bookmarks online. Del.icio.us also gives users the ability to "tag" their bookmarks with descriptive category names. For example, someone who has bookmarked multiple Web pages that deal with the Washington Nationals baseball team could tag those links with any terms they want, like "baseball," "nationals," "natsfan," etc.

As members of a "social bookmarking" community, del.icio.us sers can also see how many other people have bookmarked the same pages, and they can look at those users' bookmark collections to find other interesting online content.

To register, go to: http://del.icio.us/register

Reddit

Reddit allows users to submit news articles and other online content to the site. Users also give articles a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Reddit then uses those votes to build a user profile and to find articles to recommend to you. Users can also submit comments on items posted to the site.

To register, go to: http://reddit.com/login

Digg

My Yahoo

Fark

del.icio.us

Newsvine

Rate this Article

Rating

Post Comments

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*
Message*	Characters remaining

TERMS OF USE: The views represented here are not neccesarily endorsed by www.expressindia.com and its allied websites. All messages will be moderated and no message that has inflammatory, abusive, derogatory language or any language deemed unfit for publication by the editor will be displayed. Though it will be endeavoured that as many messages as possible be displayed, there will be time lag between the submission and publication of the messages. The website reserves the right to publish or reject any message.

I agree to the terms of use.