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Lahore has been increasingly subjected to Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked attacks
An injured child weeps as he sits next to other victims at the site of suicide bombing in Saidu Sharif, a town of Pakistan's Swat Valley, Saturday, March 13, 2010. A suicide attacker struck a security checkpoint in northwest Pakistan, killing scores of people and injuring dozens.
Eight attacks have killed more than 170 people in Lahore over the past year
A Pakistan's army solider takes away an injured victim from the site of suicide bombing in Saidu Sharif, a town of Pakistan's Swat Valley, Saturday, March 13, 2010. A suicide attacker struck a security checkpoint in northwest Pakistan, killing scores of people and injuring dozens.
Pakistan's army troops remove a dead body from the site of suicide bombing in Saidu Sharif, a town of Pakistan's Swat Valley, Saturday, March 13, 2010. A suicide attacker struck a security checkpoint in northwest Pakistan, killing scores of people and injuring dozens.
A suicide attacker set off a bomb at a security checkpoint in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing at least 10 people and injuring 52, officials and a doctor said, underscoring the relentless security threat to this Islamic nation.
It was the second attack in Pakistan in less than 24 hours. Suicide bombers killed 55 people in near-simultaneous blasts Friday in the eastern city of Lahore.
In the Saturday violence, an attacker driving a three-wheeled motorized rickshaw detonated explosives at a roadblock manned by soldiers and police in the town of Saidu Sharif in the Swat Valley, police official Qazi Farooq said.
Swat was the scene of months of violence last year between Islamist militants and Pakistan's security forces.
Lal Noor, a doctor at a local hospital, said 10 people died in the attack — one soldier, one policeman and eight civilians — and another 52 were wounded.
The Pakistani military launched a major offensive in Swat early last year after the collapse of peace talks with local Taliban officials — who at the time controlled much of the valley.
The military took back the Swat Valley by mid-2009, but sporadic violence has continued.
No one claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack, but suspicion quickly fell on the Islamist militants, who have stepped up attacks against security forces in recent days.
The same loose network of insurgents were blamed for Friday's attack in Lahore. Police official Chaudhry Shafique said Saturday that the death toll from that attack had risen to 55 after 12 more people died overnight.
Friday's bombings also wounded about 100 people, raising fears of a new wave of attacks by Islamic militants.
The Lahore attack saw two suicide bombers, who were on foot, set off their explosives within seconds of each other near two trucks carrying soldiers on patrol in RA Bazaar, a residential and commercial neighborhood with numerous military buildings. About 10 of those killed were soldiers, said Police Chief Parvaiz Rathore.
The militants — a network of Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaida and affiliated smaller groups — have been fighting to destabilize the U.S.-allied Islamabad government for years. They launched a bloody wave of bombings last fall across Pakistan, leaving 600 people dead in near-daily attacks done in apparent retaliation for an army offensive against the insurgents' main stronghold, in the tribal region of South Waziristan along the Afghan border.
The government offensive was seen as fairly effective, forcing many Taliban leaders to flee and reducing the area where the insurgents could operate openly.
The insurgent attacks slowed early this year. In recent months, they have been smaller, farther apart and largely confined to remote regions near Afghanistan. Attacks, including in major cities, have picked up again over the past week.
The death toll from a twin suicide attack in Pakistan's cultural capital Lahore rose to 57 on Saturday, as 12 more critically wounded died overnight, police said.
On Friday, two suicide bombers walked up to army vehicles in the crowded R A Bazaar area of Lahore, blowing themselves up as people sat down to eat before the main Muslim weekly prayers, police said.
Later that evening, five small bombs exploded elsewhere in Lahore causing no casualties and only minor damage, police said.
"A total of 57 people have been killed and 134 were wounded in these suicide attacks," Chaudhry Mohammad Shafiq, a senior police official Saturday told AFP by telephone.
He added that 12 seriously injured had died overnight in different hospitals. Mazhar Ahmad, chief of Lahore civil defence department also confirmed the death toll.
A military statement said eight army personnel were among the dead.
Lahore, a city of eight million near Pakistan's border with India, has been increasingly subject to Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked attacks in a nationwide bombing campaign that has killed more than 3,000 people in three years.
The bombers targeted the cantonment, home to army officials and military installations, as well as hospitals and schools run by the military. There were civilian homes, shops and restaurants in the vicinity of the attack.
Eight attacks have killed more than 170 people in Lahore over the past year, a historical city, playground for the elite and home to many top brass in Pakistan's powerful military and intelligence establishment.
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