30 killed in blast in Karachi, Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Nov. 11, 2010 (Xinhua) --

At least 30 people were killed and 150 others injured in a powerful blast that went off Thursday night in the downtown area of Karachi, the largest industrial city in southern Pakistan, sources in Karachi told Xinhua.

According to sources, a building targeted by the blast was leveled to ground and many others were buried under the debris. The number of the people trapped in the collapsed building is estimated at 40.

Initial reports said that the blast took place at a building of the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), but latest news coming in said that the blast occurred at a building of Crime Investigation Department (CID) where at least six terrorists from Lashkari-e-Jhangvi and a Taliban militant were detained inside in addition to some other criminals.

The blast took place at about 8 p.m. at the Club road in Karachi, a busy area in the city where many important building are located including the house of Sindh province governor, the residence of Karachi chief minister and the U.S. consulate.

Sources said that there was a fierce firing outside the CID building before the blast took place.

At least over 10 policemen were reportedly killed in the blast.

The blast was just so huge that it had left a 10-feet-deep crater on the blast site and all the nearby buildings were seriously damaged, said an eyewitness.

Police sources said that the blast was caused by an explosive- laden truck.

Police have rushed to the scene and sealed off the area shortly after the blast. Rescue work is under way. A lot of ambulances are seeing coming in and out the area, said the sources in Karachi.

At least 40 injured people were admitted into the Civil Hospital in Karachi while some 20 others were hospitalized at Jinnah Hospital in the city, said hospital sources, adding many injured were in critical condition.

Pakistan Taliban (TTP) has claimed the responsibility for the attack immediately after the blast was reported. It also threatened that the next target of attack is the Pakistani president's house.

Thursday night's attack is the second most serious incident of its kind over the last six months in Karachi. Not long before a shrine in Karachi was attacked by a blast, which left over a dozen of people killed and many others injured.

Editor: Mu Xuequan

Bomb kills 18 in attack on Pakistan police

AFP, November 12, 2010

Hasan Mansoor

Pakistani Taliban fighters (referred to by AFP as militants) armed with guns and a truck bomb demolished a police department used to detain terror suspects in Pakistan's biggest city of Karachi, killing 18 people and wounding 130 others.

Pakistan's Taliban swiftly claimed responsibility for what was a rare attack on government security forces in Karachi, a politically-tense city of 16 million in the south, far removed from militant strongholds in the northwest.

Karachi is Pakistan's economic capital, home to its stock exchange and the Arabian Sea port where NATO supplies dock to be trucked overland to support the more than 150,000 US-led troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The attackers targeted the police's Crime Investigation Department in the most heavily protected heart of Karachi, not far from five-star hotel chains frequented by Westerners, the US consulate and Pakistani government offices.

The band of militants opened fire, starting a gunbattle with police before detonating their bomb in an attack that at least one official compared to the 2008 attack on the five-star Marriott hotel in Islamabad that killed 60 people.

Off duty policeman Mohammad Arshad, 32, described scenes of horror after narrowly escaping the bomb while popping out for a cup of tea.

"I heard a huge blast. I ran towards the site and saw dead bodies and injured lying on the ground," he told AFP, blood splattered across his clothes.

"I picked up the people one by one to take them to the hospital. What I saw was beyond imagination."

The compound was used to detain criminals and terror suspects, and contained a women's and a men's police station.

"There are 25 women and 20 children injured. A total of 130 injured people have been brought into two hospitals," Hamid Parhiar, police surgeon for southern province Sindh, of which Karachi is the capital, told AFP.

Doctor Semi Jamali at the Jinnah Hospital confirmed more than 100 people were wounded and said that a police woman was among the dead.

Broken glass littered the area for up to two kilometres (one mile) from the bomb site, where rescue workers installed search lights in the dark as they dug frantically through the rubble for survivors, an AFP reporter said.

"The building has been completely destroyed. I can see a crater of 15 feet (five metres)," police official Tariq Razzaq Dharejo told AFP.

The Sindh police chief said 18 people were killed and that the attackers dismantled the security cordon at the department by opening fire on police.

"There was an exchange of fire between police and militants. Then it was followed by a truck loaded with explosives," Salahuddin Babar Khattak told reporters at the scene.

The CID building was used to hold militants in custody, he said, but no important suspect was in detention at the time of the attack.

"It was a huge blast, which created a big crater, a bit like the Islamabad Marriott hotel," said Zulfiqar Mirza, the interior minister of Sindh.

Sharmilla Farooqi, a spokeswoman for the Sindh government, said five policemen were among the dead.

The Taliban said they had carried out the attack.

"We accept responsibility for this attack. They used to arrest and torture our comrades here. We will target everyone who does this in the same way," Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP from an undisclosed location.

Suicide attacks and bombings blamed on homegrown Taliban and other Islamist extremist networks have killed around 3,800 people across Pakistan, since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad three years ago.

The Karachi bombing came a week after a suicide bombing on a mosque packed with worshippers killed 68 people in northwest Pakistan.

Karachi has already suffered its most serious bout of political violence in years, with more than 150 people killed since August. The city's Urdu-speaking majority and Pashtun migrants blame each other for the unrest.

The United States frequently calls on Pakistan to step up the fight against extremists that it says are fuelling the Taliban-led uprising over the border in Afghanistan.

US Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Kirsten Gillibrand, who is in Islamabad, repeated that message.

"The military and intelligence must end safe zones for militants along the border with Afghanistan and improve education and opportunity so that younger generations are not drawn to terrorist organisations," she said.

"These attacks will not stop unless Pakistan becomes a full partner in the fight against terrorism."
   
CID office blast kills 20 in Karachi

Friday, November 12, 2010

By Faraz Khan and Atif Raza

KARACHI:

* Explosive-laden truck blows up inside department’s head office located in red zone

* Police says incident reaction of arrest of Taliban affiliated with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi

At least 20 persons were killed and over one hundred injured, some critically, when an explosive-laden truck blew up inside the head office of the Crime Investigation Department (CID), which is located inside the main red zone of the city, on Thursday night, destroying everything around it and completely destroying the building.

The intensity of the blast was so severe that it was heard in a 15-kilometre radius, destroying many of the high rises and shanty settlements in its path. The blast left a 10 to 15 feet wide crater at the spot. According to bomb disposal experts around 1,000kg explosive was used in the blast filling the entire area with smoke.

Witnesses and police said the building collapsed trapping people under the rubble.

The red zone also include the CM House, Governor House, Qaiser Naz, three luxury hotels, the US Consulate and government offices.

City Police Chief Fayyaz Laghari told Daily Times that a truck loaded with explosives managed to penetrate the security checkpoints of the CID operation’s office after an intense exchange of fire. The police chief termed the incident a reaction to arrest of terrorist affiliated with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi that the CID made the day before (Wednesday). The gunmen first resorted to heavy firing on the office of the CID before detonating a massive explosive-laden truck, Sindh Home Minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza told journalists at the site of explosion. He said that the blast was similar to the blast at the Marriott in Islamabad.

Inspector General of Police (IGP) Sindh Sultan Salahuddin Babar Khattak told journalists that a truck bearing a Peshawar registration number reached the main gate of the CID building, where at least 20 suspects came out from the truck and started firing for at least 10 minutes. Later, they threw crackers inside the CID building, killing the security guards deployed at the main gate.

The provincial police chief said the terrorists later entered the premises of the building and detonated the vehicle. He said that due to the blast, the residential area around the CID office was also severely damaged. The IG could not confirm whether any of the attackers had died in the explosion, but said that senior officials of the CID managed to survive the incident.

The building has a detention facility that was believed to be holding criminals and possible militants. “We heard different rounds of firing for several minutes and then a deafening explosion,” said a witness covered in dust. “The roof of our house collapsed.”

A police constable, who survived the attack, said the entire operation was so swift that the police had no time to react. “The terrorists blew their truck by the time we reached our guns to fight them off,” he said without giving his name.

Ambulances and rescue teams rushed to the blast site and shifted the bodies and injured to the Jinnah and civil hospitals, where an emergency has been declared. Heavy earth moving machineries have been called to remove the debris and search for possible survivors.

In-charge of the Jinnah Hospital’s emergency, Dr Seemi Jamali, confirmed receiving 10 bodies along with 90 injured. The banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility of the attack, according to television channels.

Karachi is Pakistan’s economic capital, home to the country’s stock exchange and the Arabian Sea port where NATO supplies dock to be trucked overland to support the more than 150,000 US-led troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.