Pakistan suicide bombings leave 43 dead and at least 100 injured

Officials put the death toll at 43, with at least 100 injured.

About 10 of those killed were soldiers, said Lahore police chief Parvaiz Rathore.

The co-ordinated strike was the fourth major attack in Pakistan this week, indicating Islamist militants are stepping up violence after a period of relative calm.

Six security personnel were among the dead, said senior police official Chaudhry Mohammad Shafiq. One hundred people were left injured.

The bombers, who were on foot, struck at RA Bazaar, a residential and commercial area where several security agencies have facilities.

Pakistani TV channels showed security forces swarming in the area as bystanders rushed the injured into ambulances.

Eyewitness Afzal Awan said: "I saw smoke rising everywhere. A lot of people were crying."

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion quickly fell on the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida.

The militants are believed to have been behind scores of attacks in Pakistan over the last several years, including a series that began in October and killed some 600 people in apparent retaliation for an army offensive along the Afghan border.

In more recent months, the attacks were smaller, fewer and confined to remote regions near Afghanistan.

But on Monday, a suicide car bomber struck a building in Lahore where police interrogated important suspects, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens of others. The Pakistani Taliban said it was behind that attack.

Also this week, suspected militants attacked the offices of World Vision, a Christian aid group based in the United States, in the north-west district of Mansehra, killing six Pakistani employees.

Elsewhere, a bombing at a cinema in the main north-west city of Peshawar killed four people.

The violence comes amid signs of a Pakistani crackdown on Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida operatives using its soil. Among the militants known to have been arrested is the Afghan Taliban's second in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

The United States has gone after al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in Pakistan's north-west tribal belt using missile strikes. The Pakistani Taliban chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, is believed to have died in one such strike in January, though the Taliban have denied that.

Militant attacks in Pakistan frequently target security forces, though civilian targets have not escaped.

During the bloody wave of attacks that began in October – coinciding with the army's ground offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal area of South Waziristan – Lahore was a target for militants several times.

In mid-October, three groups of gunmen attacked three security facilities in the eastern city, a rampage that left 28 dead.

Twin suicide bombings at a market there in December killed nearly 50 people.

A series of small explosions went off yesterday following the main attacks, terrifying residents in a different Lahore neighbourhood.

Police officials said the four low-intensity blasts, which injured at least three people, apparently resulted from loose explosives – not packed bombs –scattered through the residential area.

While the explosions sent police and rescue workers racing through the area, there were no immediate reports of deaths or major damage.

Al-qaida suspect had nuclear jobs

A United States citizen in custody in Yemen as a suspected al-Qaida member had worked at six nuclear plants in the States, officials in New Jersey said.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was investigating what access Sharif Mobley might have had to sensitive areas at the complexes.

The 26-year-old worked at the Salem and Hope Creek plants in New Jersey; the Peach Bottom, Limerick and Three Mile Island facilities in Pennsylvania; and Calvert Cliffs in Maryland between 2002 and 2008.

But the commission said labourers like him would not usually be given security-related or sensitive information. Authorities say he passed federal background checks.

Officials said he was rounded up in an anti al-Qaida sweep and shot two guards in a Yemeni hospital during an escape attempt. His parents say he is innocent.