Deadly Blast Hits Pakistan's Lahore
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - A bomb exploded in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, killing at least eight people, medical sources said.
The blast occurred on Tuesday outside a shopping plaza adjacent to the police headquarters in the centre of the city, Pakistan's second-largest and the power base of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
"According to initial reports it was a car bomb but we are still determining the exact nature of the blast," senior police official Haider Ashraf told AFP news agency.
A breakaway faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), named Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, claimed responsibility for the attack in statement emailed to Al Jazeera by spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan.
Lahore, Pakistan's cultural capital and seen as relatively liberal, has largely escaped the worst of the violence that has engulfed the country in the last decade.
The blast comes just days after 22 people were killed in a gun and suicide attack on a Shia mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
The TTP claimed responsibility for Friday's attack in Peshawar, saying it was revenge for a fighter known as Doctor Usman, who was hanged in December.
The country has stepped up its fight against armed groups since Taliban gunmen massacred more than 150 people, most of them children, at a school in Peshawar in December.
Following the massacre, Sharif ended a six-year moratorium on the death penalty and Doctor Usman, also known as Aqil, was one of the first to go to the gallows.
In claiming Friday's attack, the TTP vowed to continue their campaign of violence.
