Taliban motorcycle bomber kills 25 in Lahore

At least 25 people were killed and dozens injured in an explosion claimed by the Pakistani Taliban that struck a busy vegetable market in the Pakistan city of Lahore yesterday.

The powerful blast hit a bustling main road in the south of the city and blew out windows in nearby buildings.

“A suicide bomber of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan used a motorcycle bomb to kill dozens of policemen,” said militant spokesman Muhammad Khurasani.

Initial police investigations suggested it may have been a suicide bomb attack.

“According to our initial findings, he was a suicide bomber, who used a motorcycle,” said deputy chief of police Haider Ashraf, who confirmed that at least 10 police officers were among the dead.

The city’s commissioner, Abdullah Khan Sumbul, said the blast targeted police.

Lahore police spokesman Syed Hammad Shah put the toll at 25 dead with 40 injured. Senior local administration official Sumair Ahmad Syed confirmed the deaths but put the number of injured at 35.

The area was busy with police because officers had been sent to the market to clear stalls that had illegally spilt on to the road. The market was crowded with shoppers at the time.

Eyewitness Sher Dil, who works at an office close to the site of the explosion, said it blew out the windows of his office building.

Pakistan’s president, prime minister and army chief all issued statements expressing condolences for the loss of life.

Lahore has been hit by militant attacks in Pakistan’s more than decade-long war on extremism, but they have been less frequent of late.

The previous major blast in the city was in March last year, when 75 people were killed and hundreds injured in a bomb targeting Christians celebrating Easter Sunday in a park.

But the country was also hit by several attacks in February this year, including a bomb that killed 14 people in Lahore. In April, seven people were killed in an attack on a census team.

After years of spiralling insecurity, Pakistan’s powerful army launched a crackdown on militancy after an attack on a school in 2014. More than 150 people, most of them children, died in the Taliban assault in the city of Peshawar.

It shook a country already accustomed to atrocities and prompted the military to step up an operation in the tribal areas, where militants had previously operated with impunity.