ISLAMABAD (AFP) –
Pakistan's army and political leaders laid their plans at crisis talks on Friday after a twin suicide bombing capped an avalanche of attacks that has killed over 170 people this month.

Pakistan's military chiefs and weak government have been floundering on the frontline of the US-led war on terror after an upsurge in a two-year campaign of suicide blasts and armed assaults by Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants.

A woman suicide bomber on a motorbike and a car bomber unleashed fresh chaos Friday, detonating near a police investigations office in a garrison area of the northwestern city of Peshawar, heavily damaging the building, police said.

It was only the second suicide bomb attack by a woman in Pakistan. The twin blasts flung human limbs across the street, splattering blood on the ground and scattering shoes, an AFP reporter at the scene saw.

"Police tried to intercept a woman sitting on a motorcycle with a terrorist. She blew herself up and after that there was another blast when a suicide attacker sitting in a car exploded," said Liaqat Ali Khan, city police chief.

Timeline of attacks

"There are two women and a child among the dead. The car exploded close to the police building. The building was badly damaged," Sahibzada Mohammad Anees, the top administrative official, told reporters.

Officials said that 13 people were killed, including three policemen, and that seven wounded were in critical condition.

The blood-soaked identity card of a second-grade school boy lay on the ground as rescue workers pulled bodies and the wounded from the rubble.

The main gate of the two-storey police Central Investigation Agency building was destroyed, the upper portion of a mosque on the premises was damaged and a crater was punched out of the road in front.

Key militant groups

Home to 2.5 million Pakistanis, Peshawar is the largest city in the northwest and lies on the edge of the lawless tribal belt where Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants sheltered after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Pakistan's powerful army chief of staff, Ashfaq Kayani, briefed the country's political leadership on the security threats and efforts to counter them at talks behind closed doors late on Friday.

Reports had said Kayani would take the civilian leaders into his confidence over a planned ground offensive in South Waziristan, part of the Pakistani tribal belt which US officials have dubbed the most dangerous place on Earth.

State media said the meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, intended to chart a course of action to counter the "serious" security predicament.

For months the military has been planning a ground offensive to crush Taliban sanctuaries in South Waziristan, where a suspected Taliban rocket attack killed three Pakistani soldiers at an army camp on Friday.

On Thursday, gunmen blasted into three security buildings in Lahore, in the country's political heartland, five days after gunmen besieged the army headquarters near the capital Islamabad and humiliated the military.

The frequency and sophistication of a string of attacks since October 5 has underscored the weakness of government security forces, whom critics say lack the necessary military hardware and counter-insurgency expertise.

"Terrorists have taken the initiative out of the hands of the security agencies, keeping them busy in cities and not allowing them to target their sources in remote areas," said analyst Hasan Askari.

Officials have interpreted the attacks as a bid to thwart a widely anticipated military offensive in South Waziristan, where the Taliban and Al-Qaeda carved out safe havens after the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

"You don't have to make statements about launching an offensive in advance. It should be swift and a surprise," said Askari.

Although there was no formal claim of responsibility, suspicion has fallen on Pakistan's Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) movement and Al-Qaeda, as well as homegrown Islamist groups Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Muhammad.