With explosion in upscale mall, terror attacks continue in Pakistan
Pakistan has deployed paramilitary forces in a politically fractious bid to crush Islamist groups that have claimed responsibility for a wave of recent attacks on civilian targets.
Pakistan has deployed paramilitary forces in a politically fractious bid to crush Islamist groups that have claimed responsibility for a wave of recent attacks on civilian targets.
A bomb detonated in an upscale shopping center in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Thursday has killed at least eight people and wounded 20 others, in the latest of a blitz of terror attacks to strike cities across the country.
With the bomber still at large, police kept people from entering or leaving the residential neighborhood after the explosion, which a Punjab police spokesman attributed to a 鈥減lanted bomb,鈥� either time- or remotely detonated, in an interview with Reuters.
The attack was the second in Lahore in two weeks, after a Feb. 13 explosion killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 80 others at a protest. Since then, suicide bombers claiming affiliation with multiple Islamic groups have also struck a courthouse in northwestern Pakistan and a famed Sufi shrine in the southern province of Sindh, with the total death toll reaching well over 100.
Those incidents have put the spotlight on the Pakistani government鈥檚 reaction 鈥� a nationwide paramilitary operation launched after the shrine bombing and aimed at聽鈥渋ndiscriminately eliminating residual latent threat of terrorism,鈥� as an Army spokesman put it, according to Voice of America. 聽
But the operation may also test聽Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif鈥檚 alliances with Islamist and right-wing parties, who have long opposed secular parties鈥� calls to deploy security forces in the province of Punjab, which will be the focal point of the operation. Mr. Sharif hails from there, and his younger brother is its chief minister. Several major Islamist parties allied with the Sharifs also have links to the thousands of hard-line religious seminaries based there and known for espousing militant viewpoints, although the parties themselves are not said to be involved in the latest attacks.聽
Pakistan鈥檚 war against Islamic militants has lasted more than a decade, intensifying in recent years after it broke off peace talks and launched offensives in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, which remains officially shut down because of security concerns.聽
Last October, Howard LaFranchi wrote for 海角大神, in an article about an Islamic-State-claimed attack on a police academy, that some experts link Pakistan鈥檚 current problems with terrorism to its longtime sheltering of similar-minded groups that carry out attacks on rival countries:
On Wednesday, Pakistan鈥檚 military said airstrikes in the border region killed several militants, while police officials in the southern city of Karachi said eight other Taliban-linked militants were killed in a raid.聽
US Ambassador to Pakistan David Hale also met with Pakistani foreign secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry and pledged that the United States would "continue to work in partnership with Pakistan to dismantle terrorist networks,鈥� according to the Associated Press.
This report contains material by聽the Associated Press and Reuters.