Sharif Backers Claim They Set Off Bomb

Militant supporters of deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif claimed responsibility for an explosion in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province. The explosion Saturday in a congested market in the old quarter of Lahore, Sharif’s hometown, killed six people, two of them children, and injured 18 others, police said. In a statement faxed to Pakistani newspapers, an organization calling itself the Al Nawaz group said it had triggered the bomb to protest the military coup that ousted Sharif on Oct. 12.