Reports: 2 blasts in northern Pakistan market

[May 28, 2009]  PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistani media are reporting that two blasts occurred in a busy market in the northern city of Peshawar and that at least 20 people were injured.

The explosions Thursday came a day after a suicide attack on police and intelligence agency offices in the eastern city of Lahore killed about 30 people and wounded more than 300 others.

Details were sketchy but the Dawn television network showed video of people carrying a bleeding man from a shop after the blasts and firefighters hosing down a burning building.

Dawn says at least 20 people were wounded. It says the blasts occurred at the Qissa Khawani market in the early evening.

___

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE.
AP's earlier story is below.

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) -- The Taliban in Pakistan claimed responsibility Thursday for a deadly bomb and gun attack on police and intelligence agency offices, saying it was revenge for the army's current offensive against militants in the country's northwest.

Hakimullah Mehsud, a deputy to Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, told The Associated Press in a telephone call that Wednesday's suicide attack in Lahore "was in response to the Swat operation where innocent people have been killed."

About 30 people died and more than 300 were wounded when gunmen fired and lobbed grenades at offices of the police and top intelligence agency, then detonated an explosive-laden van in a busy street in Pakistan's second-largest city -- a major cultural center and a hub for the armed services.

A little-known group calling itself the Taliban Movement in Punjab has also claimed responsibility for the attack. The claim could not be verified, and the militant group's relationship to the Taliban was unclear.

The attack on Lahore, the capital of the Punjab province, was far from the restive northwestern Afghan border region where the Taliban have established strongholds in the Swat Valley.

The military launched a major offensive in the Swat region late last month after the Taliban seized control of a neighboring district in a bold bid to extend their influence. Washington and other Western allies see the campaign as a test of the Pakistani government's resolve to take on the spread of militancy.

Brig. Tahir Hamid, the commander of military operations in Mingora, the largest town in the Swat Valley, said Thursday the militants had suffered "huge casualties" in the fighting and up to 70 percent of the town was now in government control.

The fighting has destroyed homes and other private property in the region, and prompted more than 2 million people to flee and thousands of others to hunker down under stiff curfew restrictions. Aid officials warn both situations could turn into humanitarian disasters.

Four soldiers and seven militants were killed in the fighting in the last 24 hours, the military said Thursday. It claims more than 1,000 militants have died in total, though access to the region is restricted and the tally cannot be independently confirmed.

Troops were consolidating positions in the valley and clearing improvised bombs, the military said. They also distributed rations to 70,000 people Wednesday, most of them in Mingora.

Wednesday's attack was the third since March in Lahore, following deadly assaults on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team and a police academy. Officials fear militants may be choosing targets there to make the point that nowhere is beyond their reach.

The site was cordoned off Thursday while officials from electricity and public works departments surveyed the damage. Senior army command and civil administration officials were visiting as well. Hospital officials said 314 people were taken to three medical centers after the blast. Eighty were still being treated Thursday, including 10 in critical condition.

The military released a transcript Wednesday of what it said was an intercepted phone call made by the Taliban spokesman in Swat, Muslim Khan, in which he sought help from militants in Waziristan to take revenge on military commanders in Punjab for the Swat offensive. Waziristan abuts Punjab.

Khan asked the recipient of the call, who was not identified, to target "generals or colonels from Punjab so that they feel the pain" of people suffering in Swat, according to the transcript.

The military did not say when the alleged call was made, or provide other details.

Officials said three suspects had been detained.

The government took out ads in several newspapers Thursday listing 21 Taliban leaders -- 18 of them with pictures -- and offering varying rewards for each, the lowest being around $12,400. The top bounty was $62,000 for senior Swat Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah.

Hospital and government officials said 15 police and 11 bystanders were killed in Wednesday's attack. The tally does not include an undisclosed number of intelligence agents whose bodies were taken to a military hospital.

In the volatile southwestern province of Balochistan, at least one man was killed in a bomb blast at the home of a local tribal leader in Sui town on Thursday, police officer Akhtar Ali Buzdar said. Two suspected militants were arrested.

[Associated Press]

Associated Press writers Munir Ahmad in Islamabad, Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Kahn and Abdul Sattar Kakar in Quetta contributed to this report.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.