Teams of gunmen attacked three security sites Thursday in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore while a suicide bomber hit a northwestern town, killing a total of 26 people in an escalating wave of terror aimed at scuttling a planned offensive into the militants' heartland on the Afghan border, AP reported. The assaults paralyzed one of the nation's most vibrant cities and showed the militants are highly organized and able to carry out sophisticated, coordinated strikes against heavily fortified facilities, despite stepped up security across the country. President Asif Ali Zardari said the bloodshed that has engulfed the nation over the past 11 days would not deter the government from its mission to eliminate the violent extremists, according to a statement on the state-run news agency. The violence in Lahore began just after 9 a.m. when a group of gunmen attacked a building housing the Federal Investigation Agency, a law enforcement branch that deals with matters ranging from immigration to terrorism. The attack lasted about 1 1/2 hours and ended with the death of two attackers, four government employees and a bystander, senior government official Sajjad Bhutta said. Senior police official Chaudhry Shafiq said one of the dead wore a jacket bearing explosives. Soon after that assault began, a second band of gunman raided a police training school in Manawan on the outskirts of the city in a brief attack that killed six police officers and four militants, Lahore police chief Pervez Rathore said. One of the gunmen was killed by police at the compound and the other three blew themselves up. -- SPA
