At least 26 people were killed and dozens injured in a suicide attack Monday in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, officials said.

The blast occurred near a vegetable market and a software technology park on the city’s busy Ferozepur Road, close to the residence of Shahbaz Sharif, the brother of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and chief minister of Punjab state, of which Lahore is the capital.

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan , the country’s main branch of the Taliban, asserted responsibility for the attack in an email, saying that one of its soldiers had used an “explosives-laden motorcycle.”

A senior police official in Lahore, Haider Ashraf, confirmed the claim and told journalists that a suicide bomber appeared to target police personnel taking part in a drive to clear street vendors from the market area.

 

Read the whole story from The Washington Post.

Featured image courtesy of AP