Karachi car bomb 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.

Some of the wounded suffered severe burns, hospital doctors
and police said. No one had claimed responsibility for the
attack, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Reuters.

The blast occurred 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.

The area is also home to some five-star hotels. England’s
touring cricket team is due to stay there next month.

“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, 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, infuriated by Musharraf siding
with the United States in a war on terrorism, have forged ties
with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network.

‘I THOUGHT IT WAS EARTHQUAKE’

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

“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.

Another KFC restaurant and a McDonald’s outlet came under
attack in September in Karachi. Two bombs exploded in quick
succession in those attacks, injuring at least two people.

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.

England’s cricket team is due to play a one-day
international on December 15 in Karachi. The tourists only
relented to play there after much persuasion from Pakistan’s
cricket authorities.

In May 2002, New Zealand’s cricket team flew home without
playing a test after a suicide bomb attack on a bus outside its
Karachi hotel. That blast killed 11 French naval technicians.

There was no immediate official reaction from the England
team’s management on Tuesday’s bombing.

(Additional reporting by Simon Cameron-Moore and Mark
Bendeich)