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24 killed in attack on Pakistani police

The suicide bombing highlights the threat to Feb. 18 elections.

LAHORE, Pakistan - A suspected Islamic militant walked into a crowd of police guarding a courthouse and blew himself up Thursday, killing 24 others and wounding dozens in the first major attack in Pakistan since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

The blast at Lahore High Court, minutes before a planned antigovernment rally by lawyers, was a bloody reminder of the security threats facing this key U.S. ally ahead of Feb. 18 parliamentary elections.

Echoing an extremist tactic in Iraq, suicide attacks have become as commonplace in Pakistan as in neighboring Afghanistan, adding to rising pressures on President Pervez Musharraf as he struggles to stay in office eight years after seizing power in a military coup.

Police said the attacker got into the midst of some 70 officers in riot gear and detonated explosives on his body, spewing shrapnel in a blast that left mangled bodies in pools of blood. All but three of the dead were police officers.

There was no claim of responsibility. The government has blamed previous attacks on Islamic radicals allied with al-Qaida and the Taliban who are intent on expanding their reach from strongholds in Pakistan's lawless tribal region along the Afghan border.

Musharraf blamed the same militants for the Dec. 27 gun and suicide bomb attack that killed Bhutto, a secular former prime minister who had repeatedly pledged to battle Islamic extremism in this country of 160-million people.

At least 20 suicide bombers have struck the past three months in attacks that killed 400 people, many of them from the security forces - the most intense period of terror strikes here since Pakistan allied with the United States in its war against al-Qaida and other extremist groups in 2001.

[Last modified January 11, 2008, 01:47:29]