A suicide bomber targeted workers queuing for their salaries outside a Pakistani bank and hotel on Monday, killing 35 people as the United Nations pulled expatriate staff from the northwest.

The twin blows to Pakistan eclipsed the military's announcement that troops had captured a key Taliban-held town during a major offensive in the tribal belt and offered five million dollars for Taliban chiefs dead or alive.

Monday's attack, near army headquarters in Rawalpindi, turned a routine day into bloodshed for the second time in less than a week, showing the enormity of the threat that al-Qaeda-linked militants pose in Pakistan.

The blast showered the area with human flesh, smeared blood on the ground and shattered the windows of a multi-storey block housing the bank and four-star Shalimar Hotel.

"Our building shook as if in an earthquake and when we came out there was smoke everywhere and body parts were thrown into our office," Raja Sher Ali, a marketing manager in a local company, told AFP.

A surge in violence left more than 300 people dead last month, when Pakistan began a major offensive against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the tribal belt where US officials say al-Qaeda is plotting attacks on the West.

On Monday evening two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a police checkpoint at the entrance to Lahore city, wounding seven people, a senior police official said.

'We have found legs and a head'

"A car was stopped at the check-post and the two suicide bombers in the car exploded themselves. We have found legs and a head," city police Chief Pervez Rathor told reporters.

Rathor said the car was packed with a huge quantity of explosives and "could have caused a catastrophe" had it entered the city.

The deadly Rawalpindi bombing was also the work of a suicide bomber, police said, although rescue workers said the cause was still unclear.

"The suicide bomber came on a motorcycle and blew up close to people gathered to get salaries. We found parts of a suicide vest and some body parts of the suicide attacker," senior police official Aslam Tarin told reporters.

"Thirty-five were killed and more than 60 wounded," Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told a news conference. Four security personnel were among the dead and nine others wounded, the military said.

The attack occurred near Pakistan's army headquarters, where 10 gunmen kept up a nearly 24-hour siege last month that left 23 people dead and deeply embarrassed the military.

Pakistan claimed more successes on Monday in its US-endorsed fight against Islamist networks which have killed more than 2420 people within the nuclear-armed Muslim nation since July 2007.

'Significant achievement'

"Kanigurram is now under the complete control of security forces," Major General Athar Abbas told reporters, hailing what he called a "significant achievement" after two days of street battles in the South Waziristan town.

Commanders on the battlefield have described Kanigurram as a major TTP "operational centre" and base for Uzbek fighters.

But the United Nations announced it was pulling out non-essential international staff from northwest Pakistan, days after at least 118 people were slaughtered in a car bomb in its local capital Peshawar.

"They will be relocated. Immediately," Ishrat Rizvi, a UN spokesperson, told AFP of the expatriate workers in the area. She could not immediately say how many staff the decision affected.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon raised the security level to "phase four" in the North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

"The decision has been taken bearing in mind the intense security situation in the region," a UN statement said.

On 5 October, five UN World Food Programme workers died when a suicide bomber walked into their Islamabad office and blew himself up. The TTP claimed responsibility.

Pakistan on Monday offered rewards worth five million dollars for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of the country's Taliban warlord Hakimullah Mehsud and 18 lieutenants.

The country's army chief Ashfaq Kayani discussed matters of "mutual" and "professional interest" on Monday in separate talks with General Sir David Richards, Britain's Chief of General Staff, and US General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, the military said.

AFP

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