A powerful car bomb exploded outside a KFC restaurant in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi on Tuesday, killing at least three people and injuring 22 others, police said.
The blast struck at about 8.45am local time, as commuters were heading to shops and offices in the crowded business hub, setting off an enormous fireball that severely damaged the restaurant, overturning and setting ablaze several cars on the street in front.
Mushtaq Shah, Karachi’s police chief, told reporters the bomb was concealed in a car parked outside the restaurant. The blast killed three people and injured 22, Shah and other police officials said.
Manzoor Mughal, a senior police investigator, said the blast left a 2m crater and appeared to have been detonated by a timer. He said the KFC restaurant, part of the global American fast-food chain, was the apparent target.
”We are trying to get information about that person who parked the explosive-laden car outside KFC,” Mughal said. ”We are also trying to trace the owner of the car.”
Mughal said the blast also damaged the offices of three Pakistani banks. One foreigner of unknown nationality was among the injured, but was released from a hospital after being treated, he said.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blast, although Karachi has been the target of a number of bombings in recent months that have killed more than a dozen people. Police said they tightened security in the city and were searching for clues about those behind the attack.
Mughal wouldn’t identify any suspects, but said members of three militant groups whom police have been cracking down on remain at large.
”We have arrested most of the members of Jundallah, Harkat-ul Mujahedeen Alalmi and Harkatul Mujahideen, but some members are still at large and any of them could be involved,” Mughal said.
He said investigators from military intelligence were hoping to glean clues from security cameras installed near the bomb site.
”So far, we only know that the bomb was in a Suzuki car,” Mughal said.
Hundreds of people gathered at the bomb site in the area of government offices and luxury hotels. The blast was powerful enough to damage windowpanes at the Pearl Continental hotel, which is popular with foreign tourists and business people.
A security guard in the hotel parking lot was hurt by a piece of flying metal, said a member of the hotel staff, Mohammed Arif.
Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, is a centre of Muslim militancy, and previous bombings in the city have been linked to Islamic extremists opposed to Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf’s close ties to the United States. Pakistan has been a key US ally in the struggle against Muslim extremists linked to al-Qaeda and Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime.
Pakistan’s Information Minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, condemned the blast, calling it the work of the ”enemies of Pakistan”.
The attack came three days before Pakistan is to host a conference of international donors to raise funds for victims of the devastating October 8 earthquake that killed about 86 000 people in the country’s north-west and in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.
The KFC restaurant occupies the ground floor of a government office building housing the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation.
Firefighters prevented the blaze from spreading to other parts of the building.
Two bodies were pulled from the KFC restaurant, while another man lay dead at the restaurant’s entrance, witnesses said. The injured included security guards at the building and nearby banks.
In September, bombs struck KFC and McDonald’s restaurants in Karachi, injuring three people in attacks believed linked to a nationwide strike called by a hard-line Islamic coalition opposed to Musharraf.
A KFC restaurant in Karachi also was burned in May, killing six workers inside during an outbreak of religious violence between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim groups in the city.
Other violence in Karachi in recent years included two attacks against the US consulate and a May 8 2002 car bombing in front of the city’s Sheraton hotel that killed 11 Frenchmen. — Sapa-AP