Pair of bombings kill 15 in Pakistan

Two bombs exploded here early today, killing at least 12 people at an office of the federal police and three at a house in an upscale residential district, authorities said.

The Federal Investigation Agency building was devastated by a bomb planted near an elevator, said Mirza Mohammed Yasin, an FIA official in the capital, Islamabad.

“The building is badly damaged. Fire is raging,” witness Tariq Saeed said by telephone outside the agency. “Bodies are being taken out of the building.”

State-run Pakistan Television said several people were taken to the hospital.

Private TV footage showed the badly damaged facade of a multiple-story concrete building, with rubble scattered across an intersection. Flames shot up from the wreckage, and several cars were damaged.

An ambulance weaved through a crowd of hundreds of bystanders -- some with torn clothes, others with minor wounds -- stumbling away from the blast scene.

Mohammed Afzal, a Lahore police official, said it was not immediately clear whose house was bombed about six miles from the police agency.

Dawn News television quoted an officer as saying that two suicide bombers drove a pickup to the house and detonated explosives. It said two of the dead were children of a gardener, but the report could not immediately be confirmed.

More than 500 people have been killed in Pakistan in bombings that intensified after troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad in July.