Gunmen, Bombers Hit 5 Sites in Pakistan; 38 Die

ISLAMABAD, Oct. 15 -- Pakistan came under a deadly, staccato series of attacks Thursday that left at least 38 people dead and raised questions about the ability of the nation's security and intelligence agencies to thwart a rising Islamist insurgency.The attacks began about 9 a.m. in Lahore, the bustling capital of the Punjabi heartland, with what appeared to be coordinated attacks on police installations. The attacks paralyzed the city, Pakistan's cultural hub, and riveted a nation that has been engulfed in deadly attacks over the past 11 days.

The first target was the Federal Investigation Agency, a law enforcement branch. Next, gunmen -- some strapped with explosives -- attacked a police training school. A third group stormed a police commando training center, where some militants fired shots and tossed grenades from a roof and others took trainees' families hostage in a residential area of the vast campus.

The attacks killed 28 people, about half of them security officers, authorities said. Ten were militants involved in staging the attacks. They were followed by a suicide car bombing that killed three police officers and seven civilians at a police station in Kohat, a northwestern city surrounded by insurgent-heavy areas. As dusk fell, a fifth blast rocked government workers' residences in Peshawar, the Northwest's main city.

Two of the Lahore targets, the FIA and the police training school, were previously attacked over the past two years. That fact, combined with last weekend's bold militant siege of the army headquarters in Rawalpindi -- known here as "Pakistan's Pentagon" -- prompted a public flood of doubts about security agencies' preparedness and cooperation with one another.



"One was expecting that there would be better planning and more fortifications," said Faisal Saleh Hayad, a lawmaker with the Pakistan Muslim League-Q. "Unfortunately it has transpired today that none of them are in place."

Malik said a Punjab-based faction of the Pakistani Taliban that carried out the attack on the army headquarters had also claimed responsibility for the Lahore attacks. It was more evidence of the links between various militant factions, including those within the restive tribal regions along the border and those in the interior, he and other Pakistani officials said.

"It's become clear that it's not a series of pitched battles anymore . . . we realize that there has to be a real clear consensus against the Taliban," said Sherry Rehman, a ruling party lawmaker.

Government officials portrayed the attacks as evidence of militants on the run from a planned ground offensive in South Waziristan, a base for Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents. Rehman MalikRehman Malik, the Interior Minister, called it a "guerrilla war." But he also said that while the intelligence agencies were on "high alert," there was a need to "build the capacity of the security agencies."

The U.S. embassy in Islamabad decried the "horrific injuries and loss of life" in the attacks today and at the army headquarters last week, calling them "another stark reminder of the amoral nature of those who commit such acts."

The United States views Pakistan's stability as crucial to the fight against terrorism.

Pakistan says the majority of insurgent attacks within the country are planned in South Waziristan, where the government for months has been threatening ground offensive. This week, as about 28,000 soldiers sealed off entry and exit points into the region, aerial bombings pounded fighters' hideouts, the military said.

Tens of thousands of civilians have fled the region, according to civil society groups and lawmakers.