Bomber Kills At Least 50 Along Border in Pakistan

Lahore, Pakistan: At least 55 people were killed and at least 120 more were wounded Sunday evening when a suicide bomber set off explosives at a border post in eastern Pakistan, police officials said.

The deadly explosion occurred in Wagah, a town on the border with India and on the outskirts of Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab province, where a flag-lowering ceremony takes place daily before sunset.

The spectacle attracts thousands on both sides of the border as people cheer and applaud smartly dressed contingents of the Pakistani Rangers and the Indian Border Security Force.

The bomber, believed to have been in his early 20s, detonated a suicide vest as spectators, including women and children, were leaving after the ceremony, said Mushtaq Sukhaira, the inspector general of the Punjab police. (Tweets on the attack)

A splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

"This is a continuation of our jihad for the implementation of an Islamic system in Pakistan," said Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar. He said the group would continue to attack "the pillars of the infidel system" now governing Pakistan.

The attack came four months after the Pakistani military began an offensive against the Taliban in North Waziristan, a rugged, northwestern tribal region that had long served as a redoubt for various local and foreign militants. The suicide bombing on Sunday appeared to be the first major retaliatory strike by the militants in mainland Pakistan.

Sukhaira said intelligence reports had noted that terrorists could target the Wagah border post. "But it is very difficult to thwart a suicide attack," he said.

Spectators viewing the ceremony have to pass through two security checkpoints before entering the site.

Pakistani officials said the suicide bomber detonated the explosives in front of a line of shops 500 to 600 yards from the main site, at a time when security was lax after the flag-lowering ceremony had concluded.

Attendance was high on Sunday because it was a holiday, and many visitors had come from other towns and cities.

Maj. Gen. Tahir Javed Khan, the director general of the Punjab Rangers, told reporters at Wagah that three Rangers officials were among those killed in the attack.

Khan said the bomber could not reach the main site because of the strict security arrangements and detonated the explosives on the outer cordon. "Otherwise, the dimensions of the damage could have been very different," he added.

In attacking the Wagah ceremony, the Taliban struck at a totemic symbol of patriotism for both India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed neighbors who have fought three major wars since 1947. The ceremony takes place every day, just before the border closes.

In the ceremony, towering Pakistani and Indian soldiers stamp their feet and goose step around one another, sometimes just inches apart, in a confrontational, yet carefully choreographed spectacle. Indian and Pakistani civilians, crowded on either side of the border, cheer and shout nationalist slogans.

About 5,000 to 7,000 people attend every day on the Pakistani side, Khan of the Rangers said.

Muhammad Nawaz, 25, a resident of Lahore, said 14 members of his family went to see the border-closing ceremony; three were killed and seven wounded.

Nawaz said his family was moving toward the exit when the blast shook everything. "I saw my brother's body blowing up in front of my eyes," he said.

Also among the dead were eight members of a family from Faisalabad, in central Punjab, most of them girls.

Saqib Latif, another Lahore resident, said five of his family members went to the ceremony; one was killed.

"It was a holiday, and we decided to watch the parade," Latif said. "As soon as we left the exit, we heard a blast and fell down on the ground," he added. "It was chaotic. Everybody was crying and running away."