AhlulBayt News Agency

source : AFP
Thursday

15 March 2018

1:22:10 PM
885803

Suicide bombing kills 9 in Pakistan's Lahore

The attack took place in the suburb of Raiwind in Lahore, the main town of central Punjab province, near a mosque hosting a religious congregation of some 60,000 people.

(AhlulBayt News Agency) - At least nine people were killed and 20 wounded late Wednesday when a suicide bomber on a motorcycle attacked a police check-post in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore, officials said.

The attack took place in the suburb of Raiwind in Lahore, the main town of central Punjab province, near a mosque hosting a religious congregation of some 60,000 people.

"At least nine people, which included five police and four civilians, have been killed.... Circumstances show it was a suicide attack," Haider Ashraf, a senior police official in Lahore, told reporters.

At least 20 people were wounded in the attack which targeted the police check-post, he said.

Jam Sajjad, a spokesman for the emergency services, confirmed the death toll.

Punjab's chief minister Shahbaz Sharif said: "The martyred policemen are our heroes. Their sacrifices will not go in vain".

The bombing was claimed by the outlawed Tehreek–e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group in a statement sent to AFP, in which the terrorists threatened more attacks on police in retaliation for killing their "associates" in Punjab.

The group was also behind the massacre of more than 150 people at a Peshawar school in December 2014 and the October 2012 shooting of Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.



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