At about 10:25 am on Wednesday the butchers called again to Lahore. They did their work well. At the time of writing there are 19 confirmed dead (35 according to unverified reports) and over 200 confirmed injured. Perhaps as many as a dozen policemen are dead and a rescue services building destroyed, with many other buildings within the blast radius having had their windows blown in and ceilings brought down, employees injured. Ganga Ram Hospital has been damaged – the roof of the operating theatre reportedly collapsed. Two alleged suspects are in custody, one of them said to have been caught in the act of disposing of his weapons. Rescue workers are still uncertain as to what the final toll will be.
We have all seen the picture before, and our media are no strangers to reporting the violence and its aftermath. There will be the usual accusations of 'failure of intelligence' or 'security lapses' but the reality is that this is an extremely difficult type of attack to countervail, even if you have good security and unsurpassed intelligence. Stopping the detonation of the bomb was virtually impossible and we should not waste our breath in speculating about which intelligence service did or did not pick up that this terrorist unit was in the city and ready to act.
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