The State Department has warned Americans not to travel to Pakistan and evacuated nonessential government personnel from the country's second largest city because of a specific threat to the consulate there, a U.S. official said Friday.

The move was not related to the threat of an al-Qaida attack that prompted Washington to close temporarily 19 diplomatic posts in the Middle East and Africa.

Pakistanis began celebrating the holy month of Ramadan on Thursday with police on alert in Lahore and shopkeepers braced for a slump in trade after the worst bombing in the city for two years.

Five people were killed and nearly 50 wounded on Saturday in the Anarkali market in Pakistan's second largest city, which prides itself on its fine cuisine, much loved during Ramadan meals at sundown.

At least 14 people, including two children, were killed on Saturday when a train collided with a packed motorcycle rickshaw in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, officials said.

The passenger train travelling from the country's financial hub Karachi to Punjab capital Lahore crushed the rickshaw on a road crossing which had no barrier.

More than 310 Pakistanis perished in horrific fires that destroyed two factories in Pakistan, an unprecedented industrial tragedy that prompted calls Wednesday for an overhaul of poor safety standards.

At least 289 people died at a garment factory in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city and the capital of Sindh province, just hours after 21 died at a shoe factory in Lahore, close to the Indian border.

Four women and two children were killed, with dozens of others trapped under rubble when a factory collapsed in Pakistan's city of Lahore on Monday, officials said.

The three-storey building used to manufacture veterinary medicines came crashing down, probably the result of a boiler and a gas cylinder explosion at the premises in the congested Multan Road area, police said.

Pakistan International Airlines said Thursday that it was investigating emailed threats that said two of its planes had bombs on board, forcing one of them to divert abruptly to Istanbul.

PIA said it received two emails late Wednesday claiming there were bombs on the two flights and directed the pilots to land immediately at the nearest airports. No bombs were found on either plane.