Taliban blast kills 7 people in Pakistan
A suicide bomb blast claimed by the Taliban ripped through a police checkpoint on the outskirts of the Pakistani city of Lahore late Wednesday, killing seven people and wounding 18, officials said.
Jam Sajjad Hussain, spokesman of a state-run rescue service, told Reuters that his officials had taken seven dead bodies to hospitals.
"Our rescuers are at work," he said. "They have shifted so far seven bodies."
Deputy Inspector General of police Haider Ashraf said the bomb exploded when the police were changing guards at the checkpoint just outside an annual religious congregation in Raiwind, where nearly 80,000 people were in attendance.
"A suicide bomber riding a motorcycle attacked the police," Ashraf said. He said four of the dead were police.
A Pakistani Taliban spokesman Mohammad Khurasani claimed responsibility for the suicide attack in a WhatsApp message sent to a Reuters reporter.
Lahore is considered a cultural hub of the nuclear-armed nation of over 208 million people where Islamist militants have been fighting for over a decade.
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