LAHORE, Pakistan – The Taliban claimed responsibility Thursday for a deadly bomb and gun attack on police and intelligence agency offices in eastern Pakistan, while two new blasts ripped through a market in the northern city of Peshawar.
At least four people were killed and two dozen were wounded in the explosions in Peshawar's Qissa Khawani market, senior police officer Zarman Shah Khan told The Associated Press. The bombs were planted in a car and a motorcycle, he said.
Television networks showed video of people carrying a bloody body from a shop, mangled and smoking cars and walls and windows apparently blasted away. Soldiers fired automatic rifles as they threaded through the bazaar's narrow lanes, though it was not clear what they were shooting at.
"It was a sudden blast and then there was fire all around, a cloud of smoke filled the sky," said Khair Uddin, a shopkeeper whose hands and chest were bloodied by shrapnel from the blast.
Peshawar is the main city in Pakistan's northwest and is a short distance from the lawless tribal regions near the Afghan border where Taliban militants have long held sway.
Violence has become increasingly common in the city. On May 16, two separate bombings on the same day destroyed an Internet cafe and wrecked a bus carrying handicapped children, killing at least 11 people.
The explosions Thursday came a day after a suicide attack on police and intelligence agency offices in the eastern city of Lahore killed about 30 people and wounded more than 300 others.
Hakimullah Mehsud, a deputy to Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, told The Associated Press in a telephone call that Wednesday's attack in Lahore was in response to the military's ongoing offensive against militants in the northeastern Swat Valley.
In the Lahore attack, gunmen fired and lobbed grenades at offices of the police and top intelligence agency, then detonated an explosive-laden van in a busy street in Pakistan's second-largest city — a major cultural center and a hub for the armed services.
A little-known group calling itself the Taliban Movement in Punjab has also claimed responsibility for the attack. The claim could not be verified, and the militant group's relationship to the Taliban was unclear.
The attack on Lahore, the capital of the Punjab province, was far from the restive northwestern Afghan border region where the Taliban have established strongholds in the Swat Valley.
The military launched a major offensive in the Swat region late last month after the Taliban seized control of a neighboring district in a bold bid to extend their influence. Washington and other Western allies see the campaign as a test of the Pakistani government's resolve to take on the spread of militancy.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox