A suicide attack Thursday on a bus in Rawalpindi was the first that singled out workers of Pakistan’s nuclear labs, military analysts said, raising questions about the government’s ability to withstand increasingly bold assaults by the Taliban against the country’s military complex.

The attack comes as Pakistan’s army is fighting the Taliban on several fronts and is about to begin an even more ambitious campaign in Waziristan. Government officials have said that the attack hit a bus carrying workers from a non-nuclear military plant, but analysts said they believed that was an effort to avoid the embarrassment of admitting that a vehicle connected with the nuclear program had been hit.

The Taliban and al-Qaeda have announced that their goal is to topple the government and gain control of nuclear arsenal. Singling out nuclear workers, even though they were miles outside the weapons lab, analysts say, carries heavy symbolism in a nation that believes its strength lies in its nuclear capability. “It showed that their intelligence is current,” said Talat Masood, a retired general and an analyst. “It was a deliberate strike. They are trying to give a hint that they can strike the personnel who are working for the nuclear facilities.”

The attack killed the suicide bomber, who rammed the bus with his motorcycle, and wounded 30 workers, the police said. Analysts said the workers were from the Kahuta Research Laboratories, where weapons-grade uranium is produced. The lab was once run by A Q Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program and one of the most successful nuclear proliferators in history. The US has spent almost $100m in training Pakistani security personnel how to make the nuclear warheads safe. But last year, US officials expressed alarm about the nation’s nuclear laboratories.

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