Jihad in Pakistan still escalating. “39 dead as militants ambush Pakistan police,” by Arif Ali for AFP, October 15 (thanks to James):
LAHORE, Pakistan — Militants unleashed coordinated attacks on Pakistani police in which 39 people died Thursday, storming offices in Lahore and bombing a northwest station to escalate 11 days of carnage.
The simultaneous assaults underscored the power of armed radicals to strike in the heart of Pakistan and the weakness of poorly equipped security forces, despite promises of a new offensive against the Taliban near the Afghan border.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan and is a key ally in the US-led fight against terror, is reeling from Taliban-linked attacks in which more than 160 people have died since October 5. Chronology: 11-days of bloodshed.
Minutes apart, between 9:00 am and 10:00 am, gunmen armed with suicide vests and grenades stormed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) branch in Lahore, plus a police training school and a commando academy on the city’s outskirts.
The training centre in suburb Manawan was previously attacked on March 30 in a militant raid that killed eight police recruits. And the FIA building in Lahore was bombed in March 2008, killing 16 people….