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| India-Pakistan |
| 4.5 tons of explosives found in second raid in Lahore |
| 2010-03-17 |
| [Dawn] Pakistani police seized 4.5 tonnes of explosives, rifles and suicide vests during raids in the eastern city of Lahore which has suffered a series of militant attacks, officials said. "The police raided different shops in the city today and yesterday and seized the explosives and weapons," a senior police official in Lahore, Zulfiqar Hamed, told AFP. The raids and seizures came days after twin suicide attacks targeting the Pakistani military killed up to 45 people in Lahore on Friday. "The police raided a shop in Iqbal Town area on Tuesday and seized 170 bags mainly containing ammonium nitrate and weighing 3,000 kilograms, two suicide vests, four rifles, three sub-machine guns and one light machine gun," Hameed said. He added that at least 10 suspects including the owner of the shop had been detained for interrogation. Police also seized 1,500 kilograms of explosive material which included potassium used in manufacturing fire crackers, 600 rifle rounds and 16 hand grenades from another shop in Iqbal Town on Monday, he said. Another senior police official, Ali Nasir Rizvi, confirmed the raids and arrests and said, "Both the shops had been rented out to one Mohammad Omar and we are trying to get hold of this person". Lahore, a city of eight million near Pakistan's border with India, has been increasingly subject to Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked attacks in a nationwide bombing campaign that has killed more than 3,000 people in three years. Violence in Pakistan is concentrated largely in the lawless northwest area along the border with Afghanistan, but analysts have warned that extremism is taking a hold in Punjab, Pakistan's most populous and politically important province of which Lahore is the capital. Eight attacks have killed more than 170 people in Lahore over the past year, a historical city which is a playground for the elite and home to many top brass in Pakistan's powerful military and intelligence establishment. Pakistani officials say that the terrorist attacks are linked to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda stronghold of South Waziristan on the Afghan border where the military has been engaged in a punishing offensive against militants since October last year. Washington says militants in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt are fuelling the war in Afghanistan, where more than 120,000 NATO and US troops are battling a nine-year Taliban insurgency. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Mmmm! I must admit I'm more concerned about Pakland being infected with the modern misuse of the word historical. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2010-03-17 00:11 |