The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Islamabad

Massive suicide bombs ripped through a seven-story police headquarters and a house on Tuesday, killing at least 24 people and wounding more than 200 others in attacks that deepened Pakistan's security crisis.

The two blasts happened about 15 minutes apart in different districts of this eastern city. The first tore the facade from the Federal Investigation Agency building as staff were beginning their working day.

City police chief Malik Mohammed Iqbal said a car packed with explosives was driven into a parking lot and detonated next to the building, which houses a department of the federal police's anti-terrorism unit.

Twenty-one people were killed, including 16 police, officials said. Doctors at Lahore hospitals said the wounded included 32 students who were hit by flying debris at a school near the police building.

Paramedics carried a bloodied body on a stretcher from the building, while volunteers sifted through the rubble with bare hands, apparently searching for survivors.

Uzair Ahmed, a watchman guarding a bungalow, said he heard a deafening boom and something hit him in the head and face. "I rushed out in panic t Everybody was running and crying. Smoke was all around and that was it. I only came to my senses in the hospital," Ahmed, his head bandaged, said from his hospital bed.

Scores of nearby houses sustained major damage. Gates and doors were torn off, windows blown in and air conditioners dislodged and left in the street.

"It was like hell let loose on us," said homeowner Fazal Muqeem, 42. Tariq Pervez, the director-general of the Federal Investigation Agency, said it had earlier received information that it could be attacked, but the reports had pointed to an attack against its headquarters in the capital, Islamabad, not in Lahore. He gave no further details.

The second explosion shattered the office of an advertising agency in a residential neighborhood, about 15 miles away. Police investigator Tasaddaq Hussain said three people were killed.

The police chief, Iqbal, said both blasts were suicide attacks. The bombings come amid a spate of violence that authorities are blaming on Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants, spreading beyond their strongholds along the Afghan border, and as the victors of last month's elections prepare to form a new government. There have been at least seven suicide attacks in the three weeks since the Feb. 18 vote.