LAHORE, Pakistan - A suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the Lahore High Court in eastern Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 23 people and wounding 47 others, police and hospital officials said. Many of the casualties were police officers, they said.
Officials said the bomber apparently targeted police who were forming a security cordon around the courthouse before the launch of a prodemocracy march by a group of lawyers. Lawyers are among President Pervez Musharraf's most vocal opponents and have accused him of interfering with the judiciary.
Lahore, which is considered the cultural capital of Pakistan, largely has been spared from the rash of suicide attacks that have plagued the country in the last year. The blast yesterday seemed to offer further evidence that Islamic extremists are increasingly branching out from the tribal areas near the Afghan border to strike ever deeper into the heartland of Pakistan. The Bush administration considers Pakistan a key ally on counterterrorism.
Muhammad Fiaz, who suffered minor injuries, said he was driving a minivan when the explosion occurred about 50 feet away.
"There was a huge blast in the back of me. All the van's windows broke," said Fiaz, 40. "There was blood, blood, blood, and dead bodies. Policemen were crying."
From inside the courthouse, where most of the lawyers had gathered ahead of their demonstration, Khurram Latif Khosa heard the blast and ran outside, where he first gave aid to a mortally wounded man, then ran to the street and found "about 60 police personnel, crying. They were all in a pool of blood."
Khosa blamed Musharraf and his government for the security lapse, saying, "They are the people who do not want a peaceful Pakistan, who are trying to create circumstances where there is no conducive environment for holding free and fair elections."
The blast occurred two weeks after former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a suicide bombing and gun attack in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, just outside the capital of Islamabad. Bhutto was killed as she waved to supporters from the sunroof of her bullet-proof vehicle while campaigning for elections. Her death sparked several days of rioting that left about 50 people dead and forced the elections to be postponed from Jan. 8 to Feb. 18.
No one has claimed responsibility for Bhutto's assassination, but the government blamed Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander in South Waziristan, a lawless tribal area in western Pakistan. A spokesman for Mehsud has denied responsibility.
Some government critics and members of Bhutto's Pakistan
Last week, Musharraf said that Mehsud and another radical Islamic leader, Maulana Fazlullah, were responsible for most of the 19 suicide attacks that have killed 400 people and injured 900 over the past three months. The wave of attacks has steadily eroded Musharraf's approval ratings, which now hover around 23 percent, the lowest marks in his eight years in power.
Some of the lawyers outside the Lahore courthouse said Musharraf's government had intelligence that suicide attackers were in the area but did not do enough to prevent the attack.
The city's chief of police operations, Aftab Cheema, said that while police did have intelligence reports that suicide bombers had entered Punjab province, it was "almost impossible" to prevent such attacks, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan, a state news agency.
Despite barricades, Cheema said, police could not close all roads and stop all passersby from approaching them.
The Associated Press wire service reported that the blast shattered windows in the courthouse and set off volleys of tear gas shells carried by the police, preventing people getting close to the victims in the moments after the attack.
The Reuters news agency quoted a police constable, Jameel Ahmed, as saying that the attacker was about 25 years old and had arrived outside the court on a motorbike.
"He parked his bike and walked to the police and blew himself up," Ahmed said.
