A suicide bomber shattered the relative calm of Lahore – the second-biggest city in Pakistan – yesterday when he rushed up to riot police outside the High Court and blew himself up, killing at least 24 people.

Pakistan has suffered a series of suicide attacks since July, including one that killed Benazir Bhutto two weeks ago, but this was the first in Lahore and it raised fears of an upsurge in militant activity before parliamentary elections on Feburary 18.

It came as eight detectives from Scotland Yard were elsewhere in the city – the capital of the eastern province of Punjab – to examine evidence from the assassination of Ms Bhutto, the opposition leader and former Prime Minister.

The attack yesterday, which wounded at least 60 people, appeared to be aimed to coincide with a meeting of lawyers from the Lahore High Court Bar Association, who were about to begin their weekly protest against President Musharraf.

Police said that a man aged about 20 pulled up near the court on a motorcycle just before midday, ran at the police cordon and detonated a jacket containing 14kg (30lb) of explosives and 3kg of ball bearings. “It appears the bomber was on foot and, as soon as some policemen tried to stop him, he blew himself up,” Malik Muhammad Iqbal, the chief of police, told reporters at the scene. All but two of those killed were policemen, he said.

Lawyers who rushed out of the court complex described seeing dozens of police lying dead or injured on the ground, their helmets, shields and batons strewn around them, all spattered in blood. A dead horse also lay in the street, still attached to a cart, alongside a mangled motorbike.

“We heard a huge bang and the building shook,” Mian Jameel Akhtar, a Lahore High Court advocate, said. “After a few seconds the smoke came in and we knew from the smell that it was a bomb. I went to the gate and saw pieces of bodies scattered hither and thither. It was terrible.”

Tasaddaq Hussain, the Lahore police chief investigator, said that his men had found the bomber’s head about 100 metres from the blast site and would reconstruct it and extract DNA to try to establish his identity.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but security officials said that they suspected militants linked to the Taleban and al-Qaeda, who are sheltering in the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan. Among the chief suspects is Beitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taleban leader based in South Waziristan whom the Government blames for Ms Bhutto’s death, although he denies any involvement.

Government officials said that police had been the target of yesterday’s attack, which was the biggest since Ms Bhutto’s assassination and came as the army prepared for a major offensive against Mr Mehsud.

Nisar Memon, the Federal Information Minister, said that the violence would not affect the election schedule.

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