A meeting of law-enforcement and intelligence agencies on Thursday named Al Qaeda and pro-Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud as the prime suspects in TuesdayÂ’s twin suicide attacks in Lahore. Sources privy to the meeting said representatives of intelligence agencies, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Punjab Police and the Crime Investigation Department said Lahore was being targeted because it housed regional headquarters of various security agencies.
Investigators said at the meeting that Lahore was not a new target as intelligence had arrested 48 suspects including seven would-be suicide bombers from the provincial capital and seized 640 kilogrammes of explosives before Muharram.
Sources in law-enforcement agencies said the owner of the vehicle used in the FIA building attack had made important revelations.
US investigators: Dawn News television said a team of US investigators visited the FIA regional headquarters bombing site on Thursday. The channel said FIA Director General Tariq Pervez had asked the Interior Ministry for a team of foreign investigators to probe the attacks. The team, consisting of two men and a woman, were accompanied by Cantt SP (Investigations) Babar Bakht, and spent twenty minutes at the site, the channel said. It quoted unidentified FIA sources as confirming the arrival of the investigators but said their plans would be kept secret because of security fears. The team is likely to visit the Model Town attack site before flying back to Islamabad, the channel said said.
15 held from Lahore: The Punjab Police on Thursday held 15 more suspects in connection with TuesdayÂ’s bombings. Police sources said the men were being questioned. Police also conducted several raids in southern Punjab, they added.
Four arrested from Muzaffargarh: APP said the district police held four members of a banned organisation from Muzaffargarh on Thursday. They were identified as Moinullah, Qari Taj Muhammad Saqib, Abdur Razzaq Mandhera and Rana Ihsan Phullu. Police also raided the houses of Qari Khalid Mahmood Zia and Maulana Abdur Rashid Bilal at Khangarh but could not arrest them, the news agency said.
On Wednesday, police had arrested more than 50 suspects – most of them from banned militant organisations – in raids in Lahore, Faisalabad, Okara, Dera Ghazi Khan and Bahawalpur, and had said they were investigating whether Al Qaeda was behind the attacks.
At least 30 people were killed and more than 200 others wounded in suicide blasts at the Federal Investigation Agency headquarters and an advertising agency office in Model Town on Tuesday morning. Attackers rammed explosives-laden vehicles into the targets in both the attacks.