The death toll from twin suicide bombings in Pakistan targeting the military killed at least 39 people, including soldiers, and wounded nearly 100, on Friday in the city of Lahore, police said.
One of the bombs went off in a military neighborhood and a military vehicle was targeted, military officials said. The second bomb hit military vehicles which arrived at the scene.Rescue workers and paramedics rushed to the R A Bazaar, a densely populated area of the city of eight million often considered Pakistan's cultural capital.
The area was crowded as a small blast and a larger explosion occurred shortly before the main Friday prayers were to start, sparking fears the death toll could rise.
Television footage showed casualties being bundled into ambulances and armed soldiers standing guard along a main road, lined with trees and where witnesses said there were shops and a mosque.
"We have the heads of both the bombers. There was an interval of 15 seconds between the two attacks. They were on foot. Their target was army vehicles," senior police officer Chaudhry Mohammad Shafiq told reporters at the site.
"According to very initial reports it was a motorcycle or a bicycle that hit a military vehicle. But we are still investigating," Shafiq said.
On Monday, a suicide car bomber destroyed offices used to interrogate suspected militants in Lahore, killing 15 people in an attack claimed by Pakistan's mainstream Taliban faction.
That attack underscored the chronic insecurity in nuclear-armed Pakistan, an ally in the U.S.-led war on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, despite a recent lull in violence.
A wave of suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan has killed more than 3,000 people since 2007. Blame has fallen on Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants bitterly opposed to the alliance with the United States.
Pakistan's military claims to have made big gains against Taliban and Al-Qaeda strongholds over the past year, following major offensives in the northwestern district of Swat and the tribal region of South Waziristan.
So far this year, there has been a decline in violence by Islamist militants in Pakistan after a significant increase in bloodshed in late 2009.
Officials have linked the reduction to the suspected death -- still not confirmed -- of TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud and military offensives that have disrupted militant networks.
