Twin suicide bombings rocked Lahore at the time of the Friday midday prayers, killing at least 39 people in the high-security military cantonment district. More than 95 people were wounded, security authorities said, and unconfirmed reports put the death toll at up to 50.

The attacks, close to each other, struck a busy market in the cantonment, which is home to the local army garrison. The suicide attackers appeared to target passing army vehicles. Six soldiers were reported to be among the dead.

"There were about 10 to 15 seconds between the blasts. Both were suicide attacks," Sajjad Bhutta, the senior local government official, said at the site. "The maximum preventative measures were being taken, but these people (extremists) find support from somewhere."

The blasts killed civilians waiting for buses and children crossing the road, and gutted shops in the vicinity.

Witnesses said that bodies, some with missing limbs, were scattered across the area.

Tariq Saleem Dogar, the top police official for Punjab province, said the bombers had been on foot, and police had found the heads of both. Bombers wearing suicide vests typically have their heads blown off by the force of the blast.

This was the second bombing to strike Lahore this week, the bustling cultural hub of Pakistan, which had enjoyed relative peace in recent months. Lahore is the capital of the eastern Punjab province, Pakistan's heartland and its most densely populated area.

It came amid military operations against Pakistani Taliban extremists in the northwest of the country, close to Afghanistan, in the Swat valley and in the tribal area, intended to cripple their ability to carry out terrorist attacks.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a car bombing Monday that was directed against a police interrogation building in Lahore, killing 14 people. Separately, insurgents armed with guns and grenades attacked World Vision, an American Christian aid agency, in the northwest of the country, killing six of its staff members, all Pakistanis.

The terrorists "are trying everything to make Pakistan a failed state. We saw what they tried in Swat. Now they have come to the mainstream," Interior Minister Rehman Malik said in Islamabad. "Terrorists want to destabilize Punjab. I warn them that they can't fight with the state."

Lahore was a major scene of insurgent violence last year, including an extraordinary gun assault on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team. Overall, insurgent violence claimed around 3,000 lives during 2009.

The launch of an army offensive in South Waziristan in October provoked a vicious spate of terrorist reprisals, but Pakistan has been relatively peaceful this year.

(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.)