Teams of gunmen launched coordinated attacks on three law enforcement facilities in Lahore and car bombs hit two other cities Thursday, killing a total of 39 people in an escalating wave of anti-government violence. The bloodshed, aimed at scuttling a planned offensive into the Taliban heartland near the Afghan border.
Highlights the militants' ability to carry out sophisticated strikes on heavily fortified facilities and exposes the failure of the intelligence agencies to adequately infiltrate the extremist cells. The attacks Thursday also were the latest to underscore the growing threat to Punjab, where the Taliban are believed to have made inroads and linked up with local insurgent outfits.
In the Taliban-riddled north-west, meanwhile, a suicide car bomb exploded next to a police station in the Saddar area of Kohat, collapsing half the building and killing 11 people _ three police officers and eight civilians _ Kohat police chief Abdullah Khan said.
Early Thursday evening, a bomb exploded in a car outside a housing complex for government employees in the north-western city of Peshawar, killing a 6-year-old boy and wounding nine others, most of them women and children, said Liaqat Ali Khan, the top police official in the region. He said an assailant parked the car outside the house and walked away before remotely detonating the bomb.