Pakistan terror attacks aim to disrupt anti-Taliban campaign

Around 40 people died in the violence, believed to have been organised by the Taliban who are facing a planned Pakistani army assault into their South Waziristan stronghold in an attempt to hinder their operations in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The assaults highlight Islamist militants’ ability to carry out sophisticated strikes on heavily fortified facilities and expose the failure of the intelligence agencies to adequately infiltrate the extremist cells.

The attacks were also the latest to underscore the growing threat to Punjab, of which Lahore is the capital. The province is next to India where the Taliban are believed to have made inroads and linked up with local insurgent outfits.

President Asif Ali Zardari said the bloodshed that has engulfed the nation over the past two weeks would not deter the government from its mission to eliminate the violent extremists.

“The enemy has started a guerrilla war,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said. “The whole nation should be united against these handful of terrorists, and God willing we will defeat them.”

The wave of violence practically shut down daily life in Lahore. All government offices were ordered closed, the roads were nearly empty, and major markets were closed.

The assaults began about 9am local time when a single gunman wearing civilian clothes and a suicide vest burst into the offices of the Federal Investigation Agency, the national law enforcement body, and began shooting.

He killed two men and four civilians and was killed by guards at the building before he could detonate his explosives.

Soon after three or four gunmen raided a police training school on the outskirts of the city, killing 11 officers and recruits, before police killed all the attackers.

A third team then scaled the back wall of a police commando training centre and stood on a roof shooting at security forces and throwing grenades.

All four were killed, along with a police officer and a civilian.

A senior government official, said the attackers appeared to be both from the lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border and from Punjab.

“They were not here to live. They were here to die. Each time they were injured, they blew themselves up,” he said. “They were well trained to the extent they could jump over the walls and shoot well.”

Officials have warned that Taliban fighters close to the border were increasingly joining forces with Punjabi militants spread out across the country and foreign al Qaida operatives, dramatically increasing the dangers to Pakistan. Punjab is Pakistan’s most populous and powerful province, and the Taliban claimed recently that they were activating cells there and elsewhere in the country for assaults.

Despite their reach and influence, the nation’s feared spy agencies have failed to stop the bloody attacks plaguing the country.

Meanwhile in the Taliban-riddled north-west a suicide car bomb exploded next to a police station in Kohat city, collapsing half the building and killing 11 people .

Another bomb exploded in a car outside a housing complex for government employees in the north-western city of Peshawar, killing a six-year-old boy and wounding nine others, most of them women and children.

The West has encouraged Pakistan to take action against insurgents who are using its soil as a base for attacks in Afghanistan, where Nato troops are bogged down in an increasingly difficult war.

The Taliban have claimed a wave of attacks that began with an October 5 strike on the UN food agency in Islamabad and included a siege of the army’s headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi that left 23 people dead.

They have warned Pakistan to stop pursuing them in military operations.

The Pakistani army has given no timetable for its expected offensive in South Waziristan, but has reportedly already sent two divisions totalling 28,000 men and blockaded the area.