Pakistan blast kills 25, injures 61 in Lahore: officials

At least 25 people were killed and dozens injured in Pakistan's Lahore Sunday after an explosion ripped through the parking lot of a crowded park where Christians had gone to celebrate Easter, officials said.

The blast came as police in Islamabad clashed with thousands of supporters of an Islamist assassin, almost a month after he was hanged for killing a provincial governor for alleged blasphemy.

"At least 25 deaths have been confirmed, but the nature of the blast is not clear," Mohammad Usman, the top administrative official in Lahore, told AFP, adding that at least 61 were injured.

Arshad Zia, the head of the Rescue 1122 service, said 26 people had been killed by the blast.

Pakistan has been battling a homegrown Islamist insurgency since 2004, with groups such as the Pakistani Taliban routinely carrying out attacks as part of their struggle to overthrow the government.

But Lahore, Pakistan's cultural capital that lies on the country's eastern border with India, has been relatively peaceful in recent years.

Nationwide, overall levels of militant violence have fallen since the army began a major offensive against Taliban and Al-Qaeda strongholds in the country's northwest border areas in 2014.

Last year saw the fewest number of civilian and security forces casualties since 2007, the year the umbrella Pakistani Taliban group was formed.

But militants have still been able to carry out major attacks.

At least 16 people were killed and more than two dozen wounded when a bomb blew up inside a bus in Peshawar, the main city of Pakistan's insurgency-wracked northwest earlier this month.

Sunday's blast in Lahore saw the highest number of casualties since a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing 55 people at the main Pakistan-India border crossing at Wagah in 2014 in an attack claimed by the Jamat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Taliban.