Twin bombs kill 25 in Pakistan's Karachi

Friday, February 5, 2010

 Karachi -

Women and children were among the 12 people killed when a suicide attacker rammed a motorbike bomb into a bus carrying Shiites on one of Karachi's busiest roads, gutting the bus and sending glass flying, officials and witnesses said.

A second bomber killed 13 people, damaging ambulances and the entrance to the casualty department at Jinnah Hospital, where the victims of the first attack were being treated and anxious relatives were gathering.

Sectarian violence periodically flares between Sunni and Shi'i Muslims, who account for about 20 percent of Pakistan's 167-million-strong population. Such violence has killed more than 4,000 people since the late 1980s.

Police said they defused a third bomb in the hospital vicinity, rigged inside a television, and were sweeping the premises for other explosives.

Witnesses and officials said the bus was packed with Shi'i Muslims heading to a religious procession to mark the last day of the holy month of Muharram in Karachi, a southern port city of 16 million people on the Arabian sea.

"I heard a deafening explosion. I saw stretchers flying in the air. Two men fell just in front of me. I think they died," said Azam Ali, 26, who went to the hospital to inquire about a cousin wounded in the bus attack.

"Those killed and injured were mostly Shi'is. They were relatives of those hurt in the first blast."

After the attack on the bus, nails from the bomb pierced the walls and doors of a bungalow on the side of the road. Blood stained the inside of the bus and shoes could be seen lying nearby on the road, said an AFP reporter.

"Twelve mourners died in the first blast and 13 people died in the second blast. More than 100 people were injured in both the blasts," Sagheer Ahmed, health minister for the southern province of Sindh, told AFP.

"Fifteen people are critically injured, hanging between life and death," the minister said.

The US embassy in Islamabad condemned the "terrorist attacks" and Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani appealed for calm in the politically volatile city, where violence has killed up to 85 party activists so far this year.

"We have found the body parts, blood and brain of the suicide bombers. Fifteen to 20 kilograms of explosives were used in first attack, and 10 kilograms in the second," said Munir Ahmad Sheikh, a bomb disposal official.

Doctor Seemi Jamali, head of Jinnah Hospital, urged the government to provide security assistance and training for a war-like situation, saying that staff, patients and relatives were terrified after the attack.

"The hospital is at standstill. Patients are scared, relatives are scared, all hospital employees are scared and... today I am devastated.

"We are trained as doctors, paramedics and nurses... We were not trained for war. If it goes on like this, working in a war, then we should have training for war," she told reporters.

It was the deadliest bombing in Pakistan since 101 people were killed at a volleyball match in the northwestern district of Lakki Marwat on New Year's Day, and follows a recent decline in militant activity.