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Blasts kill 49 in Lahore market

Suicide attack kills 9 near Multan ISI office

AFP, Multan
Suicide attackers launched a gun and bomb assault near an office of Pakistan's main spy agency in an eastern city yesterday, with nine people dead in the third bloody militant strike in 24 hours.
The commando-style attack In the prime minister s hometown of Multan came after 49 people were killed when two bombs devastated a market in Lahore, engulfing shops in flames and burying people under the rubble.
Attacks blamed on Islamist fighters have surged this year as Pakistani troops battle the Taliban in the rugged tribal regions near the Afghan border, under fierce US pressure to do more to destroy extremist strongholds.
Strikes against military targets have increased, underscoring weaknesses at the heart of the nuclear-armed nation's most powerful establishment.
Two attackers fired on soldiers as they drove a pick-up truck packed with explosives past security check posts, trying to approach the
Multan offices of spy agency the Inter Services Intelligence, officials said.
When challenged, they detonated the car bomb, killing five civilians, two soldiers and themselves and blowing a massive crater in the road.
"It was a suicide attack. There were two attackers who were stopped at the check post, but they tried to flee and security personnel fired at them," senior police official Arif Ikram told reporters.
"The attackers returned fire and also launched two rockets, and later exploded their vehicle."
Multan's top administrative official Sayed Mohammad All Gardezi said that one military building was badly damaged in the blast, adding: "They did not succeed to hit the target."
Emergency services officials had previously put the death toll at 12 people, but Ikram said final investigations showed nine dead and 47 injured.
On Monday night, two bombs planted 30
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metres (yards) apart blew up within seconds of each other at the bustling Moon Market in central Lahore as people milled around the shops and restaurants.
"Forty-nine people were killed and around 150 were injured in these blasts," Chaudhry Shafiq, a senior city police official, told AFP on Tuesday.
Six children were among the dead, a rescue official said.
"It was like doomsday," shopkeeper Mohammad Billal said. "I saw people dying and crying. Some of them were burnt to death. Most of the injured were from families who came for late night shopping."
Lahore was the second provincial capital to be hit on Monday, about eight hours after a suicide bomber killed 10 people outside a court house in the north-western city of Peshawar, a frequent target ofTaliban militants.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the slew of attacks, but officials blamed the Lahore bombings on Taliban fighters avenging an ambitious military operation to dismantle their strongholds in South Waziristan.
A fierce Islamist insurgency has killed more than 2,670 people in attacks in Pakistan mostly blamed on the Taliban in the last two-and-a-half years, and October and November saw a surge in blasts.
Hasan Askari, a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins
University, said the latest attacks showed that militants were fanning out across the country.
"This means that these militant elements have now placed their people in different cities," he told AFP.
"These are the people who have been dislodged from South Waziristan and now pair with local militant groups (elsewhere in) Pakistan."
Pakistan's military is engaged in offensives against Islamist fighters across much of the northwest including the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, a region branded by Washington as the most dangerous place on earth.