By DPA
Islamabad : Pakistani newspapers Saturday published pictures of the suspected suicide bomber who killed 21 police officers and three civilians Thursday in Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province.
“The name and address of the person providing the information will be kept strictly confidential, and the cash award of Rs.25 lakh ($40,000) will be awarded by the government of Punjab,” read an advertisement published in all major Urdu and English daily newspapers.
The bomber blew himself up near dozens of police officers deployed Thursday outside the High Court building, also wounding 60 people, many of them policemen. The investigators found a partly damaged head 150 feet from the scene of the blast and reconstructed it on the following day.
The picture showed a man of 20 to 25 years of age, with a short beard. He appears to be either from Pakistan’s northern areas or Afghanistan, said Chaudhry Tassaduq Hussain, a senior police officer and the chief of a seven-member team that is probing the attack.
Thursday’s blast was the latest of a countrywide wave of suicide bombings targeting security personnel, government officials and politicians, leaving more than 700 people dead in 2007.
Pro-Taliban militants and Al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and parts of North-West Frontier Province are believed to be behind the bombings.