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Bomb Blast in lahore at Rescue 15 building 27 may 2009
At least 30 people are believed to have been killed and 250 injured when gunmen detonated a car bomb in the Pakistani city of Lahore today.
The bomb went off outside the building of the emergency police service and near that of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
At least four men with rifles stepped from the car and opened fire on the ISI building, then set off the blast when security guards returned fire, officials said. Police said two suspects were detained.
Raja Riaz, a minister in the Punjab provincial government, said about 30 people had died. Sajjad Bhutta, a senior government official, said more than 250 people were injured.
At least nine police and several intelligence agents were among the dead, officials said. The remainder of the dead and the bulk of the wounded were civilians caught in the mid-morning blast.
A police call centre was reduced to rubble, and walls at the ISI office collapsed. The ceilings of several operating rooms in a nearby hospital fell in, injuring 20 people.
"The moment the blast happened, everything went dark in front of my eyes," said a witness, Muhammad Ali. "The way the blast happened, then gunfire, it looked as if there was a battle going on."
The attack was the third major strike in Lahore in recent months. The interior minister, Rehman Malik, suggested it could be retaliation for the government's military offensive to rout Taliban militants from the north-western Swat valley.
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