At least 26 people were killed in Pakistan this morning in a series of suicide attacks in the eastern city of Lahore and a car bombing in Kohat in the north-west of the country. The Islamic Tehrik-e-Taliban, an umbrella group of militant organisations, has claimed responsibility for the Lahore attacks.

Six security officials of the Federal Investigation Agency in Lahore and at least one militant were killed in a shootout when insurgents attacked the building. The agency is near its former headquarters, which were destroyed in a suicide bombing last year. Some 25 people were killed in the 2008 bombing.

Four militants attacked a police training centre in Manawan on the outskirts of Lahore, killing six police officers. Three militants blew themselves up after a shootout and another was killed in the exchange of fire.

A group of more than 20 militants attacked the Elite Force Training School on Lahore's Badian Road. The building was retaken after a battle which lasted around four hours. Pakistani military officials say at least five of the militants were killed.

In Kohat a suicide bomber rammed a van into the outer wall of a police station, killing some ten people and badly damaging the building.

In the past week more than a hundred people have been killed in various suicide attacks throughout Pakistan, including an assault on the country's military headquarters in Rawalpindi. Since April, the Pakistani army has been carrying out a major offensive in the Afghan border region against the Taliban and other Islamic groups.
 

Lahore, Pakistan's second largest city (left)
Federal Investigations Office emblem (right)
Photographs by Wikimedia Commons