'Pools of Blood' Outside Pakistani Courthouse

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 10, 2008 — -- The scene, one policeman said, looked straight out of hell.

Bodies burned in pools of blood after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside of the high court in Lahore, Pakistan, killing at least 22 people this afternoon, officials told ABC News. All but two of those killed were police. More than 70 were wounded and a dozen are listed in critical condition.

The bombing is just the latest attack on Pakistan's institutions — the police, the army, and the politicians — and comes five weeks before elections that analysts describe as make-or-break for a country considering democracy but also on the verge of disorder.

"There were about 60 to 70 policemen on duty when a man rammed into our ranks and soon there was a huge explosion," Officer Syed Imtiaz Hussain, who was hurt in his legs and groin, told The Associated Press.

"I saw the bodies of other policemen burning."

The bomb, which experts say contained as many as 30 pounds of explosives, sent shrapnel as far as 450 feet away, causing tear gas shells carried by the police to explode, witnesses told ABC News. The gas temporarily prevented aid workers from getting close to victims.

"We heard a blast, we came out and, at the gate on the left hand side, we saw a police contingent in a pool of blood," a witness told the AP television network. "I saw a clerk of a lawyer who was also in a pool of blood."

"Police were a target," Malik Mohammed Iqbal, the chief of police in Lahore, told ABC News. "It came as a surprise. We had taken all humanly possible measures to avoid any such incident."

In response to the bombing, Iqbal said, security in Lahore "has been enhanced. It was already enhanced … and now we are making full-proof security arrangements."

The attack's toll could have been much higher. It took place just moments before a group of lawyers were about to begin an anti-government march at the sight of the bombing. One attorney told Pakistan's Dawn TV that the only reason they hadn't left the courthouse to begin the march when the bomb exploded was because the weather was so cold.

In the last three months, militants have launched at least 20 major attacks in Pakistan, killing about 400 people, most of them police and soldiers. The government blames the Taliban, al Qaeda and its allies, but there are rarely any claims of responsibility, and today was no exception.

The attack in Lahore came less than two weeks after Benazir Bhutto, head of the Pakistan People's Party, was assassinated in Rawalpindi, the army garrison town about 200 miles north of Lahore.

The eight-member Scotland Yard team investigating Bhutto's assassination had planned to be in Lahore on Thursday but their trip was cancelled. The team, which first arrived in Pakistan late last week, has interviewed victims and witnesses, recreated the assassination on the spot where it occured and has been briefed by local forensic experts on their findings.

Today was meant to be the team's first visit to Lahore, which before the bombing had been mostly free of attacks. By this afternoon, it became another city in Pakistan where the constant drumbeat of violence is creating an atmosphere of fear.