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Three Americans were killed in Afghanistan Saturday, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said.

Two of the U.S. service members died in a bombing in southern Afghanistan. The third death followed an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan. No other details were immediately available.

The casualties came as the top American diplomat and top U.S. general in Afghanistan reassured the troubled nation of U.S. support.

“Now looking ahead, we’re all focused together on the upcoming parliamentary elections and the key test will be the satisfaction of the Afghan people with the progress that’s going to come from their hard work as they approach the elections — their incredible reputation for perseverance and their indomitable spirit,” said Amb. Karl Eikenberry, speaking to Afghan journalists with Gen. David Petraeus.

Meanwhile, Afghan and coalition soldiers fought off assaults on two military bases that left more than 20 insurgents dead, ISAF said.

The fighting occurred in Khost province, a volatile region on Afghanistan’s rugged border with Pakistan.

Insurgents clad in U.S. military uniforms and wielding rocket-propelled grenades and small arms “simultaneously launched attacks” against Forward Operating Base Salerno and Forward Operation Base Chapman, ISAF said.

Chapman is the same base where a suicide bomber killed seven CIA officers on December 30.

Troops killed about 15 insurgents at Salerno and six at Chapman. Five insurgent fighters were captured and were in ISAF custody.

A Haqqani network operative who helps carry out bombings and two other insurgents died in an airstrike while fleeing Salerno in a vehicle. Two insurgents who got into Salerno were killed by soldiers. The Haqqani network is a militant group with ties to al Qaeda.

“We are tightening our grip on the insurgents and as a result they are attempting anything and everything as a last ditch effort,” said U.S. Army Col. Rafael Torres, ISAF spokesman. “The insurgents gave their best effort and came up short.”

Afghan police and ISAF members seized a car bomb and a vehicle carrying ammunition. Forces also seized suicide vests, rifles and unexploded munitions.

Four ISAF soldiers were injured, and three have returned to duty. The fourth was set to return to duty soon. No base facilities were damaged.

Also Saturday, an Afghan civilian was killed by a suicide attacker in southeastern Paktika province, ISAF said. Seven people also were wounded when the insurgent detonated a suicide vest.

By the CNN

EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT- An Afghan National Army soldier stands near the body of a suicide attacker near a NATO base in Khost province of Afghanistan, Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010. Insurgents launched pre-dawn attacks Saturday on a major NATO base in eastern Afghanistan and a nearby camp where seven CIA employees were killed last year in a suicide bombing. NATO said there were no coalition casualties and the attacks were repelled. It said 13 insurgents were killed, four of whom were wearing suicide vests, and five captured. (AP Photo/Nishanuddin Khan)

BAGHDAD — The killers came at night, speaking passable English and wearing uniforms and carrying weapons that resembled those of the American military.
By the time they left the south Baghdad district of Hur Rijab on Friday evening, they had fatally shot or slit the throats of 25 members of an extended family, Iraqi officials said Saturday, in a chilling episode of violence reminiscent of the worst days of the country’s sectarian warfare in 2006 and 2007.

Most of the 19 male victims had been members of Iraqi security forces or of Awakening Councils, groups that now partner with American forces and are employed by the Iraqi government to protect Sunni neighborhoods, but whose members had once been allied with Sunni extremist groups like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia during fighting against American troops.

Members of Awakening Councils are often targeted by Al Qaeda as traitors, but their families have typically not been attacked. Iraqi authorities said 25 people had been arrested as part of the investigation, including some who lived near the families.

At Mahmudia Hospital, 25 coffins arrived on a truck Saturday morning for the victims, who ranged in age from teenagers to men in their 70s.

Family members, men standing separate from women, waited outside the hospital, stunned by what had happened.

Luyai Khadum said he had lost his father and four brothers.

“They were all killed,” he said. “I lost five family members. We are a Dulaimy family so why would they do this to us?”

Often, a mention of the family’s influential tribe, the Dulaimy, is enough to protect them. This time it was no help.

Details of the attack remained sketchy Saturday afternoon, as Iraqi police cordoned off the neighborhood and ordered a curfew there. The known survivors are all children.

But according to accounts by relatives of the victims, neighbors, Iraqi security officials, and others, as many as a dozen men wearing what resembled American and Iraqi military uniforms arrived in the neighborhood in a minibus and Iraqi military and police vehicles Friday night.

Witnesses, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said some of the men wore black masks and carried weapons that resembled M-16 rifles, which are used by the American military.

They knocked on the doors of several houses and gathered people at the home of Saif Shaker, an Awakening Council member.

They men said they were part of a joint unit of American and Iraqi soldiers investigating a crime.

Some of the men spoke English translated to Arabic by an interpreter who told the family that the adults — men and women — should go upstairs, while the children should be left downstairs. They were told not to worry.

Upstairs, their hands were bound. Then, the 16 men and four women who had been gathered were shot in the head or chest, the sound of gunfire echoing through the neighborhood.

The children were left crying and shaking with fear.

“I came back home and I saw the children inside one of the rooms,” said Khalid Ahmed, a family member. He said he did not go upstairs for a few minutes but when he did he found it covered in blood, the bodies of his family dead on the floor.

Iraqi authorities said after the gunmen fled, they stole the family’s car and went to the house of Kadham Abbas Saeil al-Dulaimy, another Awakening Council leader.

Again, the armed men claimed to be members of an American and Iraqi military unit, and separated children from adults.

One of men referred to one of the women, Ipti Hal, by name and told her to go upstairs with the other adult members of the family, said Luyai Khadum, a family member who said surviving children had given him that detail.

The men then bound the hands of the three men and two women, including Ms. Hal, and slit their throats, the authorities said.

The armed men stole about $9,000 and the family’s gold jewelry, said Mr. Khadum.

Mr. Khadum, said that on Thursday, a group of what neighbors told him was a joint American and Iraqi military force had come to the house but found no one home. He said neighbors told him that the armed men had threatened them with arrest if they told the family they had come to the house.

Iraqi soldiers stopped vehicles at a checkpoint in Baghdad on Saturday as part of security measures after killings in the south district of Hur Rijab.

Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up on Moscow’s subway system as it was jam-packed with rush-hour passengers Monday, killing at least 37 people, officials said.

Witnesses described panic at two stations, with commuters falling over each other in dense smoke and dust as they tried to escape the worst attack on the Russian capital in six years.

The head of Russia’s main security agency said preliminary investigation places the blame on rebels from the restive Caucasus region that includes Chechnya, where separatists have fought Russian forces since the mid-1990s. Alexander Bortnikov, head of the FSB, told President Dmitry Medvedev the bombs were filled with bolts and iron rods.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who built much of his political capital by directing a fierce war with Chechen separatists a decade ago, vowed that “terrorists will be destroyed.”

In the wake of the explosions, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced a “heightened security presence,” NBC News reported.

The first blast just before 8 a.m. (12.00 a.m. ET) tore through the second carriage of a train as it stood at the Lubyanka metro station. The explosion killed at least 23 people.

The headquarters of the FSB, Russia’s main domestic security service and the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, is located in a building above the station.

‘Stampede’
Another blast about 40 minutes later wrecked the second carriage of a train waiting at the Park Kultury metro station, killing 14 more people.

“I heard a bang, turned my head and smoke was everywhere. People ran for the exits screaming,” said 24-year-old Alexander Vakulov, who said he was waiting on the platform opposite the targeted train at Park Kultury.

“I saw a dead person for the first time in my life,” said 19-year-old Valentin Popov, who also was standing on the opposite platform. “Everyone was screaming. There was a stampede at the doors. I saw one woman holding a child and pleading with people to let her through, but it was impossible.”

Surveillance camera footage posted on the Internet showed motionless bodies lying in Lubyanka station lobby and emergency workers treating victims.

Emergency Minister Sergei Shoigu said the toll was 37 killed and 102 injured, according to Russian news agencies.

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said both explosions were believed to have been set off on the trains.

“The first information that the FSB has given us is that there were two female suicide bombers,” he told reporters.

Russia’s civil aviation regulator ordered local airports to increase security, an official told Reuters.

President Barack Obama condemned the “outrageous” attacks. “The American people stand united with the people of Russia in opposition to violent extremism,” he added.

The Kremlin had declared victory in their battle with Chechen separatists who fought two wars with Moscow; but violence has intensified in the neighboring regions of Dagestan and Ingushetia, where Islamist militancy overlaps with clan rivalries and criminal rings.

‘Black Widows’
Jonathan Eyal, director of international security studies with the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said a group known as the “Black Widows” may have been involved in the attack. Some “Black Widows” are believed to have lost brothers or husbands in the Chechen conflict.

“This is a direct affront to Vladimir Putin, whose entire rise to power was built on his pledge to crush the enemies of Russia,” Eyal added. “The fact of the matter is that there is very little you can do to protect against this kind of attack without shutting down the entire transport system.”

The Moscow subway system is one of the world’s busiest, carrying around 7 million passengers on an average workday, and is a key element in running the sprawling and traffic-choked city.

The blasts practically paralyzed movement on the city center’s main roads, as emergency vehicles sped to the stations. Helicopters hovered overhead the Park Kultury station area, which is next to the city’s renowned Gorky Park.

Passengers, many of them in tears, streamed out of the station, one man exclaiming over and over “This is how we live!”

The current death toll makes it the worst attack on Moscow since February 2004, when a suicide bombing killed at least 39 people and wounded more than 100 on a metro train.

Chechen separatists were blamed for that attack.

Rapid transit has increasingly become the favored means of attack for Islamist terrorists. Over the past seven years, terrorists have targeted trains and subways throughout the world, killing nearly 800 people and wounding more than 1,500. Hard money training.

Pakistani troops killed at least 34 militants after about 150 Taliban attacked a military checkpost in the northwest on Friday, challenging government assertions crackdowns have weakened the group.

Homegrown Taliban rebels are seeking to topple the U.S.-backed government of unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari, who has been pressured to hand over some of his key powers, such as dissolving parliament and appointing military chiefs.

A senior military officer and four paramilitary soldiers were also killed in the attack in Orakzai, a day after Pakistani jets killed nearly 50 people, mostly militants, in strikes on a school and a seminary in the same region, a government official said.

Fourteen soldiers were wounded in the Taliban assault.

Orakzai, one of seven Pakistani tribal regions near the Afghan border, also known as agencies, has seen a surge in military attacks in recent months, targeting militants who were driven out of their bastion of South Waziristan.

Pakistan mounted two offensives last year in the northwestern Swat Valley and in South Waziristan on the Afghan border, which it says threw al Qaeda-linked militants into disarray.

But despite losing ground, the Taliban hit back with bombings that killed hundreds, prompting troops to step up attacks in other northwestern regions where militants are believed to have taken refuge after offensives.

In the latest attack, about 150 Taliban launched a pre-dawn assault on a checkpoint in Orakzai, triggering fierce fighting.

“They attacked from three sides which continued for nearly three hours in which a lieutenant colonel and four other security officials were killed,” said government official Khaista Rehman.

“Security forces launched the counter-attack in which 24 militants have been killed,” he said. A paramilitary official, said as many as 30 militants may have been killed.

Army jets and helicopter gunships later targeted suspected militant hideouts in various parts of Orakzai and killed another 10 militants, said government official Mohammad Asghar Khan.

Orakzai is considered a militant stronghold of Pakistan Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, who is widely believed to have been killed in a U.S. drone aircraft attack in January.

Pakistani action against militants along its Afghan border is seen as crucial to the U.S. efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan, particularly as Washington sends more troops there to fight a raging Taliban insurgency before a gradual withdrawal starts in 2011.

The two allies pledged increased cooperation in tackling militants during two days of talks in Washington that ended on Thursday, with Washington promising to speed up overdue military payments.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates praised Pakistan for increased coordination over stabilizing Afghanistan, including the recent arrest of a key Afghan Taliban commander in what has been described as a joint American-Pakistani raid in Karachi. Hard money training.

A car bomb exploded in the Colombian port town of Buenaventura on Wednesday, killing at least nine people and wounding dozens more in an attack authorities blamed on FARC guerrillas or cocaine traffickers.

The blast destroyed part of the local office of the attorney general in Buenaventura, the country’s largest port which handles half the country’s coffee exports but is also a major drug trafficking route to the Pacific coast.

Local television images from the city showed wrecked taxis and destroyed store fronts as residents carried wounded people to hospitals minutes after the blast, the worst attack this year in the Andean country.

Colombia’s long war has ebbed since President Alvaro Uribe came to power in 2002 and sent troops to take on rebels and drug barons. But guerrillas are still fighting in rural areas and the country remains the world’s top cocaine exporter.

“We cannot let our guard down,” Uribe said after the bombing, without blaming any armed group. “We had recovered a lot in Buenaventura, this act shows we cannot allow ourselves to be too confident.”

Nine people were killed and another 50 wounded in the blast, the National Police said.

Armed Forces commander General Freddy Padilla said guerrillas from the FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, were suspected in the bombing. But the country’s attorney general said the attack could have been carried out by drug traffickers in retaliation for investigations.

FARC rebels are still a threat in rural areas where they use ambushes, hit-and-run attacks and homemade landmines to harry army and police patrols. The rebel group is deeply engaged in drug trafficking and extortion.

The coast near Buenaventura is a key cocaine smuggling point and rebels and rival paramilitary militias have often bombed and attacked army and police patrols in the city.

Uribe is popular for his U.S.-backed security drive and he steps down this year after two terms in office. Colombians go to the polls in May to vote for a new president and most candidates are promising to maintain his security policies.

A poll on Wednesday showed his former defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, was leading the race for the presidency. Santos was credited with organizing important strikes against FARC rebel commanders during his time as minister. Hard money training.

A German court on Tuesday convicted an 88-year-old man of murdering three Dutch civilians as part of a Nazi hit squad during World War II, capping six decades of efforts to bring the former Waffen SS man to justice.

Heinrich Boere, No. 6 on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most-wanted Nazis, was given the maximum sentence of life in prison for the 1944 killings.

“These were murders that could hardly be outdone in terms of baseness and cowardice — beyond the respectability of any soldier,” presiding judge Gerd Nohl said.

Boere sat in his wheelchair, staring at the floor and showing no visible reaction as the verdict was announced.

During the trial, which began in October, Boere admitted killing a bicycle shop owner, a pharmacist and another civilian in 1944 as a member of the “Silbertanne” hit squad — a unit of largely Dutch SS volunteers responsible for reprisal killings of their countrymen.

He said he had no choice but to follow orders to carry out the killings.

“As a simple soldier, I learned to carry out orders,” Boere testified in December.

“And I knew that if I didn’t carry out my orders I would be breaking my oath and would be shot myself.”

But the prosecution argued that Boere was a willing member of the fanatical Waffen SS, which he joined shortly after the Nazis had overrun his hometown of Maastricht and the rest of the Netherlands in 1940.

Though sentenced to death in absentia in the Netherlands in 1949 — later commuted to life imprisonment — Boere has managed to avoid jail until now.

One German court refused to extradite him because it ruled he might have German nationality as well as Dutch. Another would not force him to serve his Dutch sentence in a German prison because he was absent from his trial, having fled to Germany.

“We welcome the conviction, we welcome the sentence and this is again another proof that even at this point it is possible to bring Nazi war criminals to justice,” Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said by telephone from Jerusalem.

“It also underscores the significance of the renewed activity on the part of the German prosecution,” he said.

Dolf Bicknese — the son of pharmacist Fritz Hubert Ernst Bicknese, one of the victims — also voiced satisfaction.

“I’m happy that the judge made a good decision,” he said.

Defense lawyer Gordon Christiansen said he would appeal to a German federal court. Boere will remain free until the appeals process is complete.

Boere was born in Eschweiler, Germany — on the outskirts of Aachen, where he lives today. The son of a Dutch man and a German woman, he moved to the Netherlands when he was an infant.

Boere has testified that he decided to join the SS at age 18 after the Germans had overrun the Netherlands and he saw a recruiting poster signed by Heinrich Himmler that inspired him.

After fighting on the Russian front, Boere ended up back in the Netherlands as part of “Silbertanne” — a death squad believed to be responsible for 54 killings in Holland. Hard money training.

The House sent its historic health care reform legislation to President Barack Obama for his signature, The Associated Press reported. The bill, which would extend health care coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans and ban insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, passed the House 219-212 on Sunday. “I want to thank every member of Congress who stood up tonight with courage and conviction to make health care reform a reality,” Obama said. “I know this wasn’t an easy vote for a lot of people. But it was the right vote.” Republican lawmakers attacked the legislation and said the voters would hold House members accountable for passing it. “In this economy, with this unemployment, with our desperate need for jobs and economic growth, is this really the time to raise taxes, to create bureaucracies and burden every job creator in our land? The answer is no,” Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) said.

In other news: The U.S. warned ships sailing off the coast of Yemen to be wary of a possible al Qaeda attack, Reuters reported. The U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence said it received information that ships in the Red Sea, the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait between Yemen and Djibouti and the Gulf of Aden along Yemen’s coast were at the greatest risk of attacks similar to the suicide bombing of the U.S. warship Cole that killed 17 in 2000.

Sandstorms whipped across China today, shrouding cities and towns with sand and grit. According to The AP, the sweeping storms have prompted officials to suspend some services due to poor visibility and issue health warnings. Breathing in the sand can cause chest discomfort and respiratory problems, even in healthy people. Click here to see images of the sandstorms.

Lastly, the British Airways strike entered its 3rd — and busiest — day on Monday, The AP reported. The union representing the cabin crew and the airline both claimed victory over the walkout that has caused BA to cancel hundreds of flights. The acrimonious dispute over pay and working conditions is expected to cost the airline more than $95 million. Last week, BA offered a proposal that would reduce 3,000 workers from full- to part-time status, freeze wages for a year and cut cabin crew sizes on long haul flights.

Most read stories: Three Swiss pilots set a new speed record after completing a round the world trip in less than 58 hours, Reuters reported. The charter plane flew over 33 countries, and stopped to refuel 10 times.

Readers were also interested in this AP obituary for Margaret Moth. The CNN war zone camerawoman died on Sunday from cancer at the age of 59. Moth was seriously wounded by sniper fire in 1992 in Sarajevo. After undergoing several reconstructive surgeries, she returned to the war-torn country to record the documentary “Fearless: The Margaret Moth Story.” Moth also covered the rioting that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 and the Israeli invasion of the West Bank in 2002. Hard money training.

A U.S. envoy’s postponement of his Mideast trip appeared Tuesday to deepen one of the worst U.S.-Israeli feuds in memory — even as Israel’s foreign minister signaled his government had no intention of curtailing the contentious construction at the heart of the row.

Hundreds of Palestinians hurled rocks at police and set tires and garbage bins ablaze across the holy city’s volatile eastern sector, where the construction is planned. Plumes of black smoke billowed and the air reeked of tear gas in the heaviest clashes in the city in months.

Youths in one east Jerusalem neighborhood hoisted a giant Palestinian flag and shouted, “We’ll die in Palestine, Palestine will live.”

Thousands of police, including anti-riot units armed with assault rifles, stun grenades and batons, were deployed across east Jerusalem to stifle the unrest. No serious injuries were reported.

The diplomatic crisis erupted last week after Israel announced during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden that it would build 1,600 apartments for Jews in disputed east Jerusalem, the sector of the holy city that the Palestinians claim for a future capital.

The announcement enraged Palestinians, who have threatened to bow out of U.S.-brokered peace talks that were supposed to begin in the coming days. The Obama administration, fuming over what it called the “insulting” Israeli conduct, has demanded that Israel call off the project.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio that demands to halt Israeli construction there “are unreasonable” and predicted the row with the U.S. would blow over, saying neither side had an interest in escalation.

But Washington notified Israel early Tuesday that envoy George Mitchell had put off his trip indefinitely. Mitchell had planned on coming to wrap up preparations for relaunching Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But now it’s not clear when the indirect talks, to be mediated by Mitchell, will begin.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apologized for the timing of the project’s approval, but he has not said it would be canceled. On Monday, he defended four decades of Jewish construction in east Jerusalem and said it “in no way” hurts Palestinians.

The feud is feeding already high tensions in east Jerusalem, where Jews and Palestinians live together uneasily.

The violence also threatened to spread to the West Bank. At the main checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem, dozens of Palestinian teens threw rocks and a few firebombs at Israeli troops, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.

In east Jerusalem, security forces, some on horseback, charged a group of more than 100 youths, who had set garbage bins afire and lobbed rocks at police. Palestinian merchants shuttered their stores, and Palestinian schools in the city were closed.

The Palestinian rescue service said six people were lightly injured. Israeli police said 39 people were arrested, including eight minors.

Palestinian officials called on the public to defend Muslim religious interests in Jerusalem following the rededication Monday of a historic synagogue in the Jewish quarter of the Old City.

The rededication has stoked recurring but unsubstantiated rumors that Jewish extremists are planning to take over the hilltop shrine at the crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The site, known to Jews as Temple Mount, was home to the biblical Jewish temples and is Judaism’s holiest site. Muslims call it the Noble Sanctuary and it hosts the Al-Aqsa mosque complex, Islam’s third-holiest shrine.

But the outbreak of violence also appeared to reflect deeper frustration amid a yearlong standstill in peace efforts.

Palestinians, who number about 250,000 in east Jerusalem, see the building of new settlements and the presence of some 180,000 Jews there as a grave challenge to their claims to the territory.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem after capturing it from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war. Most Israelis accept the Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem as part of Israel, and previous peace proposals have allowed them to remain in Israeli hands. Hard money training.

A pair of suicide bombers targeting army vehicles detonated explosives within seconds of each other Friday, killing at least 39 people in this eastern city and wounding nearly 100, police said. It was the fourth major attack in Pakistan this week, indicating Islamist militants are stepping up violence after a period of relative calm.

About ten of those killed were soldiers, said Lahore police chief Parvaiz Rathore.

The bombers, who were on foot, struck RA Bazaar, a residential and commercial neighborhood where several security agencies have facilities. Security forces swarmed the area as thick black smoke rose into the sky and bystanders rushed the injured into ambulances. Video being shot with a mobile phone just after the first explosion showed a large burst of orange flame suddenly erupting in the street, according to GEO TV, which broadcast a short clip of the footage shot by Tabraiz Bukhari.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Who are these beasts? Oh my God!” Bukhari can be heard shouting after the blast in a mixture of English and Urdu.

Senior police official Tariq Saleem Dogar said 39 people were killed, and another 95 were hurt. Some of the wounded were missing limbs, lying in pools of blood after the explosions, eyewitness Afzal Awan said.

“I saw smoke rising everywhere,” Awan told reporters. “A lot of people were crying.”

No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion quickly fell on the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida.

The militants are believed to have been behind scores of attacks in U.S.-allied Pakistan over the last several years, including a series of strikes that began in October and lasted around three months, killing some 600 people in apparent retaliation for an army offensive along the Afghan border.

In more recent months, the attacks were smaller, fewer and confined to remote regions near Afghanistan.

But on Monday, a suicide car bomber struck a building in Lahore where police interrogated high-value suspects — including militants — killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.

Also this week, suspected militants attacked the offices of World Vision, a U.S.-based Christian aid group, in the northwest district of Mansehra, killing six Pakistani employees, while a bombing at a small, makeshift movie theater in the northwest city of Peshawar killed four people.

Rana Sanaullah Khan, the law minister for Punjab state, where Lahore is located, said the renewed attacks are a “sign of desperation” by the militants.

“We broke their networks. That’s why they have not been able to strike for a considerable time,” he said.

But the attacks show that the loose network of insurgents angry with Islamabad for its alliance with the U.S. retain the ability to strike throughout Pakistan despite pressure from army offensives and American missile strikes against militant targets.

The violence also comes amid signs of a Pakistani crackdown on Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida operatives using its soil. Among the militants known to have been arrested is the Afghan Taliban’s No. 2 commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

The Pakistani Taliban, meanwhile, are believed to have lost their top commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, in a U.S. missile strike in January. The group has denied Mehsud is dead but has failed to prove he’s still alive.

Militant attacks in Pakistan frequently target security forces, though civilian targets have not escaped.

During the bloody wave of attacks that began in October — coinciding with the army’s ground offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in the South Waziristan tribal area — Lahore was hit several times.

In mid-October, three groups of gunmen attacked three security facilities in the eastern city, a rampage that left 28 dead. Twin suicide bombings at a market there in December killed around 50 people. Hard money training.