A woman suicide bomber on a motorbike and a car-bomber detonated devices near a police investigations office in a garrison area of the northwestern city of Peshawar. The blast killed 11 other people, including three police officers, two women and two children.
The second suicide attack by a woman in Pakistan was followed by a rocket attack on an army camp in the Shakai area of South Waziristan -- a Taliban and al-Qa'ida stronghold near the Afghan border. The rocket strike left three soldiers dead.
The nuclear-armed country was left reeling on Thursday after 40 people died in a string of assaults on security buildings in Lahore and bombings in the northwest.
At least 10 attackers blasted into the Federal Investigation Agency branch in Lahore, a police academy in the suburb of Manawan and an elite commando school on the outskirts within minutes of each other.
The co-ordinated assaults underscored the power of radicals to destabilise the country and deter the military from launching an anticipated ground offensive in South Waziristan. Police said dozens of people had been picked up in overnight raids in the slums of Lahore and neighbourhoods populated by Afghans.
"There has been considerable progress in the ongoing investigation. We have arrested dozens of suspects during overnight raids," said Haider Ashraf, senior police official at the Manawan police academy. "These people are being interrogated. We are also trying to identify the terrorists who were killed yesterday."
The frequency and sophistication of a string of attacks since October 5 has underscored the weakness of government security forces, which, critics say, lack military hardware and counter-insurgency expertise.
Source: The Australian
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