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Worries rise as bombings intensify

Militants in Pakistan show wider reach and greater ferocity.

LAHORE, Pakistan - Security officials warned Wednesday that this week's suicide truck bombing marked a dangerous escalation by militants who are now striking across Pakistan.

A yearlong wave of suicide bombings has intensified in recent weeks, posing a stiff challenge to the victors of the Feb. 18 election as they prepare to form a government and begin a new era of civilian rule after eight years of military domination under President Pervez Musharraf.

In the past, Islamic militants generally targeted troops and military convoys in Pakistan's volatile northwest, where some 100,000 soldiers are deployed in support of the U.S.-led war against the Taliban, al-Qaida and other extremist groups.

But five of the 16 bomb attacks this year have been in the east - in Punjab, Pakistan's biggest and most prosperous province, including its main city of Lahore, which has been hit three times in two months.

Tuesday's blast, which killed at least 24 people and wounded more than 200, gouged a crater 5 feet deep and blasted out walls of the seven-story Federal Investigation Agency building. A separate attack in another part of the city killed three more people.

Tariq Pervez, chief of the Federal Investigation Agency, said it was the largest amount of explosives he had seen used in an attack during his 20 years in counterterrorism.

[Last modified March 13, 2008, 00:12:16]