Militants unleashed attacks in Pakistan yesterday that left 40 people dead, storming police offices in Lahore and bombing targets in the northwest to escalate 11 days of carnage.
The coordinated assaults underscored the power of armed radicals to strike in the heart of Pakistan, and the weakness of poorly equipped security forces, despite promises of a new offensive against the Taliban.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led fight against terrorism, is reeling from two years of Taliban-linked attacks that have escalated with over 160 people killed since October 5.
Minutes apart, between 9 a.m. (1100 GMT) and 10 a.m., gunmen armed with suicide vests and grenades stormed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in Lahore and a police training school and commando academy on the outskirts.
"They were very young - 19 to 20 years old. Three of them were clean shaven and one had a small beard," police recruit Dildar Hussain, 21, said from his hospital bed as he was treated for arm and collar-bone fractures.
The training centre in the suburb of Manawan had been attacked on March 30, leaving eight police recruits dead. The FIA building in Lahore was also bombed in March 2008, with 16 people dead.
Pakistan's government said the country faced a new war after a slew of militant attacks in the political heartland of Punjab, away from the insurgent hotbed of the northwest tribal region.
"They are involved in guerrilla war. First they were active in NWFP (North West Frontier Province). Now they are engaged in Punjab. They are terrorists paid to destabilise Pakistan," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters.
Although there was no claim of responsibility, he said Pakistan's Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) movement and Al-Qaeda and homegrown Islamist groups Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Muhammad were suspects.
Five attackers, including two teenagers, scaled the back wall of the commando academy at Bedian, on the city's outskirts, sparking a three-hour siege before the army announced it was in control.
Officials said families living in the grounds locked themselves in after gunmen wearing black uniforms besieged the compound, which is thick with vegetation and lies 10 kilometres from the Indian border.
Police officer Mohammad Azfar said two gunmen shot in the head were teenagers and three who blew themselves up were aged about 20. Jahanzeb Khan, a police official, said most of the attackers at Bedian were teenagers.
"One was 15 to 16 years old. He could not detonate his (suicide) jacket. He also had a packet of dates," Mr Azfar said.
Among the dead, security officials identified 16 police and a civilian, and 10 attackers who were shot dead or blew themselves up.