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Karachi car bomb kills 2: police

Posted on: Tuesday, 15 November 2005, 03:46 CST

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)

Source: REUTERS

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