Pak arrests six suspects over terror attacks in Lahore, NWFP

Pakistani authorities have arrested at least six suspects, including four who were receiving treatment for gunshot wounds in a hospital, from this southern port city in connection with the recent spate of terror attacks in Lahore and Peshawar.

Two militants belonging to the Amjad Farooqi group, a faction of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan which has close links with al-Qaeda, were arrested from a house near the super highway in the city, police sources said.

They said a large number of explosives and weapons were recovered yesterday from the house, where the two militants were holed up.

Acting on information received from the two arrested militants, intelligence and security agencies later took into custody four suspects from the private hospital in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal area of Karachi last night in wounded condition, the sources said.

"The agencies raided the hospital on information they extracted from two militants earlier arrested from a house near the super highway," they said.

The agencies raided the private hospital and arrested the four men who were receiving treatment for gunshot wounds and shifted them to an unknown location for interrogation, the sources said.  "The agencies suspect all six were involved in  the recent spate of terrorist attacks in Lahore and Peshawar and might have come to Karachi to hide and recover from injuries," the sources said, adding the authorities expected to make more arrests in next few days.

The six men were arrested as Pakistan was rattled by a fresh wave of attacks yesterday by suspected Taliban militants who stormed three security facilities in Lahore and carried out a suicide bombing at a police station in Kohat and an explosion in the north west frontier province (NWFP) capital Peshawar leaving at least 40 people dead, the fifth terror strike in the country within 11 days.

Yesterday's Peshawar blast came a week after 52 civilians were killed when a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle in a crowded market in the city.

Last week, a group of terrorists also attempted to storm Pakistan Army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. Nine attackers and 14 security personnel and civilian employees of the armed forces had died in the assault.

The Amjad Farooqi faction of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, which claimed to have carried out the attacks in Lahore yesterday, had also owned up responsibility for the terror assault on the army's General Headquarters.