Two Suicide Bombers Kill Dozens in Pakistan

(March 12) -- Two suicide bombers blew themselves up alongside soldiers patrolling a market in Pakistan's heartland today, killing at least 45 people and wounding 100 in the second major attack on U.S.-allied troops there this week.

The blasts rang out through Lahore's R.A. Bazaar around lunchtime, in an army-controlled area that connects the city's airport with nearby military housing. Shoppers were crowding in to buy goods as Muslim prayer calls began to ring in the weekend.

Witness Nadeem Attari, his clothes soaked in blood, said he ran out of a nearby mosque when he heard the blasts. "I left the prayers and rushed outside," he told The New York Times. "Suddenly, there was another blast near an army vehicle. ... I ran away."

Lahore is the biggest city in Punjab, Pakistan's second most populous province and a recruiting heartland for soldiers. The Taliban considers Pakistani troops traitors for cooperating with NATO forces fighting terrorists along the border with Afghanistan. Pakistan's military gives tacit approval to American drones that frequently fire missiles into tribal areas and often inadvertently kill civilians. It's also stepped up its own operations against Taliban and al-Qaida-linked fighters, and teamed with U.S. forces to successfully capture the Taliban's military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Karachi last month. Militants have in turn launched counterattacks on Pakistani soldiers.

Today's blasts were the second direct hits on Pakistani military targets this week. On Monday, another suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden truck into the main gate of a Lahore house where the Pakistani military sometimes interrogates suspects. That blast killed at least 15 people, including guards, and flattened the building.

The Pakistani Taliban, an offshoot of the Afghan group, claimed responsibility for Monday's blast, but there was no such claim yet in today's attacks. The group was thought to have been weakened after two top leaders were killed one after another in American airstrikes.

But analyst Massod Shareef Khattak said it appears the fighters have regrouped. "We've been hearing that their backs are broken for quite some time," he told the Pakistani TV station Express News. "I don't see all this ending anywhere in the near future or even in the distant future."

A Lahore police officer, Sohail Sukhera, told the Times his city is now "in a state of war" after today's explosions. Soldiers have cordoned off the blast area and installed snipers on nearby rooftops, as army helicopters whirl overhead.

Local media quoted police as saying the bombers targeted Pakistani military vehicles, approaching them on foot near a crowded bus stop where many civilians were lining up to head home after shopping. The explosions rang out about 15 seconds apart. Many of the victims were parents picking up their kids from school or worshipers streaming out of mosques after Friday prayers. At least five soldiers were among the dead, police said.

The bombers managed to maneuver inside Lahore's army-controlled quadrant, despite recent government assertions that crackdowns have weakened militants' ability to penetrate Pakistani security. Pakistani forces have smashed Taliban bases in South Waziristan province and in tribal areas next to Afghanistan, but scattered militants have nevertheless been able to melt into the local populace and turn up in explosive vests in marketplaces like in today's brazen attacks.

"If somebody is determined to kill there is no [security] strategy that can work, so far, in the world," Lahore's city commissioner, Khusro Pervez, told Dawn television.

Pakistan's foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, condemned the bombings and said "terrorism will never be allowed to succeed in its nefarious designs."