LAHORE (Pakistan) - TWO people were wounded on Saturday when three bombs exploded at a cultural centre in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, police said, in the latest in a wave of bloody attacks in the country.

The attackers were apparently targeting an international performing arts festival at an entertainment and sports complex in the city of some 10 million people, police said.

Provincial police chief Shaukat Javed said there had been fears militants would try to attack the 10-day festival, which drew performers from around the world.

'It appears that the bombs were meant to create fear among artists from across the world who were performing,' he said.

'Police took extraordinary security measures (for the festival) and the miscreants apparently failed to break the security cordon,' he added.

Two of the bombs exploded in a the basement of a building near where a concert was taking place, while the third went off outside the main gate to the complex, in a car park set up for visitors, Mr Javed said. All three were of low intensity.

Lahore police official Mohammad Akram earlier said that two people were wounded in the blasts.

Police have cordoned off the site of the explosions and evacuated the area.

Pakistan has been battling an Islamist insurgency led by Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants since former president Pervez Musharraf joined the US-led 'war on terror' in 2001, but the violence has soared since the start of 2007.

Washington believes the militants are launching attacks into neighbouring Afghanistan from hideouts in the mountainous tribal areas, of northwest Pakistan.

US forces fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan have in recent months apparently stepped up their missile strikes against suspected militant hideouts in the tribal areas, where terror network chief Osama bin Laden is widely believed to be hiding.

Pakistani security forces said that a strike early on Saturday killed Rashid Rauf, the alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot who had been on the run for almost a year.

The attack came days after Taleban militants based in the rugged tribal territory bordering Afghanistan warned of reprisal attacks across Pakistan if there were more strikes by the United States. -- AFP