Bombs kill 18 at Shia procession in Lahore

At least 18 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Wednesday when three bombs exploded amid a procession of Shia Muslims.

Witnesses said that in one attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd – the type of attack that Pakistani Taliban militants have claimed in the past.

“According to my information, 18 people are dead and over 100 injured,” Sajjad Bhutto, a government official in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, told state-run Pakistan Television.

Another government official said: “I would be surprised if the death toll doesn’t climb further.”

Soon after the blasts, a mob set fire to a police station and several vehicles. People also beat policemen, witnesses said.

Pro-Taliban Sunni militants frequently attack Shia Muslims as part of a campaign to destabilise the government.

The attacks came after a lull in violence of more than a month while Pakistan has battled floods that have devastated large parts of the country. But for the past two weeks, intelligence officials have raised the alarm that Taliban militants were believed to be preparing to renew their bombing campaign.

A Pakistani intelligence official from Islamabad told the Financial Times that the attacks appeared to have been carried out by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the main umbrella organisation of Taliban militants who have fought the country’s security forces for almost a decade.

“The Taliban have a history of wanting to target the Shia Muslims. This was a day of large gatherings to commemorate the death anniversary of Imam Ali,” said the official.

A renewal of Taliban-related violence also poses a fresh challenge to Pakistan’s efforts to attract international assistance and aid workers to the country to help with relief work for up to 20m people affected by the floods.

Last month, a UN official said any threat of militant attacks targeting relief workers “will probably come as a major setback to efforts for resettling the flood victims”.

Meanwhile, US prosecutors have charged the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, over a plot that resulted in the deaths of seven CIA employees at an American base in Afghanistan last December, the US Justice Department said on Wednesday.

Mr Mehsud, believed to be in the tribal areas of Pakistan, was accused of conspiracy to kill Americans overseas and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.