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Suicide attack at Lahore navy school kills six

By admin | March 4, 2008

A suicide car bomb attack on a prestigious naval college of Lahore on Tuesday killed at least six people and injured another 13, officials said.

At least one bomber blew himself up in the parking lot of the Naval War College in the heart of Pakistan’s second biggest city, setting off blasts in nearby cars and sparking a fire, they said.

The bombing was the fourth in five days in Pakistan, posing a major challenge to the country’s incoming government, set to be a coalition led by the parties of slain ex-premier Benazir Bhutto and former premier Nawaz Sharif.

A navy spokesman said two attackers were involved.

“We have confirmed there were two suicide bombers, they came in a vehicle, entered into the parking area and exploded themselves,” spokesman Captain Akbar Naqi told AFP.

Lahore police chief Malik Mohammad Iqbal however said there was only one bomber.

“It looks like a suicide attack, a man drove a Suzuki car into another vehicle parked behind the war college. The front side of the bomber’s car is badly damaged and pellets are spread all around,” Iqbal told AFP.

“There was no important visit at the time of the blast.”

The interior ministry said four people were killed and 13 wounded.

The Naval War College trains senior naval officials from Pakistan and other countries including China, Sri Lanka and at least a dozen Muslim nations. It moved to Lahore from Karachi in 1996.

Television footage showed ambulances and fire trucks rushing to the scene of the blast, which was shrouded in thick smoke and littered with debris.

Police and witnesses initially reported at least three blasts but Iqbal said the subsequent blasts were caused by petrol tanks in parked cars exploding.

“The blasts were so huge they shook the windowpanes of my office opposite the college. I thought the building was collapsing,” Lahore lawyer Arif Saeed told AFP.

Around 600 people have died across the northwest of Pakistan since the start of the year in clashes between pro-Taliban militants and security forces and in a wave of suicide attacks blamed on the extremist rebels.

Tueday’s attack comes two days after a teenage suicide bomber blew himself up at a meeting of tribal elders discussing how to tackle Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the northwestern town of Darra Adam Khel, killing 43 people.

On Friday, another bomber killed at least 44 people in the northwestern Swat valley at the funeral for a policeman killed in a roadside bombing. On Saturday, a suicide car bomber killed two people in the lawless Bajaur tribal district.

The army’s top medical officer, Lieutenant General Mushtaq Baig, was killed in a suicide attack in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on February 25.

Pakistani troops opened fire on a pick-up truck carrying Islamic militants in a troubled tribal area, blowing up the vehicle and killing five rebels, the military said Tuesday.

The Lahore attack came as the chief of the US military held talks with President Pervez Musharraf and the army top brass in Rawalpindi on his second visit to the crucial “war on terror” ally in a month.

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