Three parcel bombs exploded in two police offices and a government building in Pakistan’s violence-plagued commercial capital Karachi on Wednesday, injuring at least nine people including a parcel courier, police said.
The blasts occurred in the space of some 30 minutes within a two kilometre radius of the heart of Pakistan’s largest city.
”All three were parcel blasts. They went off as the parcels were opened,” a senior police officer told AFP. A parcel bomb exploded in the office of the Pakistani police force’s top al-Qaida investigators at the Crime Investigation Department (CID) just before 1:30 pm (0830 GMT), said CID investigator Mukhtar Junejo.
”We received two parcels and when an officer opened one of the parcels it exploded and two police officers received minor injuries,” Junejo said. The CID was set up in Karachi 12 months ago to track down fugitives from Osama bin Laden’s network as well as Pakistani Islamic militants.
Another parcel bomb went off in the Karachi police force’s operational headquarters in a district called Artillery Medan, injuring four people, said police officer Abdul Rauf.
A third parcel bomb exploded in the offices of the Sindh provincial government’s home affairs department at Tughlaq House, said Karachi police chief Asad Jehangir.
Two people were injured in the blast in Tughlaq House. ”The explosions occurred within a 35 to 40 minute period,” said Karachi deputy police chief Tariq Jamil.
”It is an act of terrorism,” Sindh home secretary retired Brigadier Mukhtar Sheikh declared. ”If the message was to deter us from pursuing the war on terrorism these terrorists are mistaken,” he said.
”Our war against terrorism will continue.”
Sheikh said it was premature to guess who was behind the parcel bombs. But definitely government offices and police were the targets.” Police are interrogating an employee of a private courier service who was also injured, police officer Rauf Dogar said. The other eight victims were taken to the city’s Jinnah police hospital, Rauf said. One of the injured police officers lost both his hands. Doctors listed his condition as serious.
Karachi has been shaken by a chain of deadly attacks on Western and Christian targets this year, including two suicide car bomb attacks which killed 11 French nationals and three Pakistanis outside the Sheraton hotel, and 12 Pakistanis outside the US
consulate.
Seven Christian charity workers were shot dead at point blank range in their Karachi office here on September 25. – Sapa-AFP