Suicide blasts on Pakistan shrine kill 42: Lahore on high alert

---

BNP acting general secretary Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir speaking at a discussion at the National Press Club in the city Saturday. — Focus Bangla Photo

LAHORE, July 2 (AFP): Pakistan's second city Lahore was on high alert Friday after two suicide bombers blew themselves up in an Islamic shrine packed with worshippers, killing 42 people and wounding scores more.
Pakistan's Taliban, which has been instrumental in a wave of deadly attacks blamed on Islamist militants over the past three years, denied it was involved in Thursday's bombing in the heart of the country's cultural capital.
Footage from the scene of the carnage at a shrine dedicated to a Sufi saint showed crowds of panicked worshippers fleeing in all directions as a huge blast sent clouds of smoke into the air.
"I saw dead bodies and injured people lying on the floor in pools of blood," said one witness.
Television pictures showed bloodied clothes strewn on the ground outside the heavily damaged shrine and people crying and beating their chests in despair.
Pakistan has been hit by a wave of attacks by the Taliban and other Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist extremists that have killed more than 3,400 people in the last three years.
But a spokesman for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan denied it was involved in Thursday's attack, the second bloody bombing against religious sites in Lahore in just over a month.
The group was thrust into the global spotlight over its alleged involvement in a plot to blow up a car bomb in New York's Times Square in May.
On Friday, large numbers of police and other security personnel were patrolling all busy and sensitive areas in Lahore, a city of around 10 million people in eastern Pakistan.
Security was particularly tight around mosques for weekly Muslim prayers.
Thousands of people were at the shrine in the crowded centre of Lahore dedicated to Sufi saint Hazrat Syed Ali bin Usman Hajweri, popularly known as Data Ganj Bakhsh, at the time of the blasts.
"A total of 42 people have been martyred," senior rescue official Mazhar Ahmad told AFP.
Authorities said they had found the heads of two suicide bombers, who wore the green turbans of Sufi followers, and were investigating how they had managed to penetrate the area despite strict security measures.
Hours after the blasts, two firecrackers exploded near the American consulate and Lahore Press club, adding to jitters in the city, but no-one was hurt.
Lahore has increasingly suffered Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked violence, with around 265 people killed in nine attacks since March last year.
The city is considered a playground for Pakistan's elite and home to many top brass in the military and intelligence community.
Sufism is a mystical movement that spreads the message of Islam through music, poetry and dancing. Radical groups consider the movement, which includes both Shiites and Sunnis, as un-Islamic.
Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have orchestrated a three-year bombing campaign in Pakistan to avenge military operations and the government's alliance with the United States over the war in neighbouring Afghanistan.