LAHORE: At least 25 people including 13 FIA officials were killed and over 200 others were injured when two bombs that ripped through a federal police headquarters and an advertising agency in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Tuesday, police said.
The deadliest blast demolished much of the federal police headquarters in the heart of the eastern city, while the other hit an advertising office several kilometers (miles) away. Two children were among the dead.
Rescue workers in orange jackets frantically clawed through the debris at the site of the blast at the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), which deals mainly with immigration and people smuggling.
"It was a suicide attack on the FIA office and it was the target," Lahore police chief Malik Mohammad Iqbal said.
Lawyer Wali Mohammed Khan, who was on the second floor of the building when the explosion happened, said the blast was "so intense that I was literally blown off my chair."
"There was blood everywhere. I also saw mutilated limbs and body parts scattered around the reception area of the building," Khan said.
FIA chief Tariq Pervaz said paramedics were "trying to rescue survivors from under the rubble." FIA sources said that at least 13 employees were among the dead.
The building also housed the offices of a US-trained special investigation unit created to counter terrorism, which was possibly the intended target, security officials said.
Pools of blood and small pieces of human flesh lay scattered on the ground outside the eight-storey building, along with clothes and pairs of shoes that were abandoned by people as they ran away.
The second near-simultaneous blast was also caused by a suicide car bomb and hit an advertising agency in an upscale neighbourhood of the city, killing another four people, including two children, police said.
"An explosives-laden vehicle was rammed into the office," interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said.
Many of the attacks have targeted the armed forces, police and security forces. The army's top medical officer, Lieutenant General Mushtaq Baig, was killed in a suicide attack in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on February 25.
13 FIA officials among 25 killed in Lahore twin bombs