Car bomb at Karachi KFC kills 2: police

By Aamir Ashraf

KARACHI (Reuters) – A car bomb exploded outside a KFC
fast-food restaurant in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi
on Tuesday, killing two people and wounding about 15, some
critically, police and doctors said.

A government spokesman said information was still coming in
from the scene, and the death toll was unclear. Some of the
wounded suffered severe burns, hospital doctors and police
said.

The car bomb exploded outside a KFC outlet in central
Karachi just before 9 a.m. local time (0400 GMT), gutting the
restaurant and shattering the windows of a nearby six-storey
office block housing several oil and gas exploration firms.

“This is an act of terrorism and apparently the KFC was the
target,” Manzoor Mughal, chief of investigation for Karachi
police, told Reuters. “Our initial findings were that an
explosive was placed inside a car.”

The restaurant was closed at the time of the blast.

“We have two confirmed deaths. Initially there were reports
that four to six people were killed in the blast but luckily
only two people were killed,” Mughal said, adding the two
killed were security guards for Muslim Commercial Bank.

An ambulance crew member for the Edhi Foundation,
Pakistan’s largest charity, told Reuters six bodies had been
taken to hospital, but doctors there said only two were dead,
though six of the casualties admitted were in a critical
condition.

Two other KFC restaurants, a Pakistani franchise of the
global food chain owned by YUM Brands Inc YUM.N, have been the
targets of attacks in Karachi in recent months.

Militant groups, some linked to al Qaeda, have been blamed
for several bombings targeting U.S. and Western interests in
the city in recent years.

President Pervez Musharraf ordered a crackdown in July on
militant groups, particularly those fuelling hatred between
Pakistan’s majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shi’ites.

Some Sunni militant groups have forged ties with Osama bin
Laden’s al Qaeda network.

‘I THOUGHT IT WAS EARTHQUAKE’

A senior officer in the police bomb-disposal squad said the
bomb had been locally made, weighed around five k.g. (10 lbs),
and was detonated by a timing device.

Police said there were casualties in and outside the office
block. Some had severe burns.

“I thought it was earthquake and then I became
unconscious,” said injured security guard Hassan Ali, being
treated in hospital for head injuries and bandaged over his
left eye.

Some banks on the ground floor of the office building also
felt the force of the blast, which blew other cars on the road
to pieces. Tenants of the building include Pakistan Petroleum
Ltd (PPL) PPL.KA.

Another KFC restaurant and a McDonald’s outlet came under
attack in September in Karachi. Two bombs exploded within
minutes of each other at the two fast-food franchises, injuring
at least two people, police said.

In May, six KFC employees were burned to death when their
restaurant was torched by a mob during an outbreak of Muslim
sectarian violence, which has plagued the city for years.