KARACHI, 16 November 2005 — Three people were killed in a car bomb attack outside a KFC outlet in Karachi yesterday. An ethnic Baloch nationalist group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The bomb, concealed in a stolen Suzuki car parked outside the KFC restaurant in the PIDC building in the Sadar district, went off at about 8.45 a.m. as commuters were heading to shops and offices in the crowded downtown area of Karachi. At least 15 people were injured.

Police explosives expert Mohammed Iqbal said the bomb was made from 5 kilograms of homemade explosives and detonated by a timer. The Suzuki was blown to pieces, leaving a crater two meters across. The front of the restaurant was destroyed, and six vehicles were overturned and incinerated. The offices of three Pakistani banks and a nearby five-star hotel was damaged.

Doctors said two men died on the spot and the third in a hospital. Police said one foreigner of unknown nationality was among the injured, but was released from a hospital after being treated.

Chakar Azam, spokesman for the Balochistan Liberation Army, said they detonated the car bomb outside the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation building where the offices of Pakistan Petroleum Limited are also located.

“We claim responsibility for it,” Azam said in a telephone call to The Associated Press in the southwestern city of Quetta. “We didn’t want to hurt civilians.”

“We did it to protest, and we did it to pressure the government to get our rights.”

The ethnic militia is demanding the federal government give more revenue to local people for natural gas extracted from their territory.

In recent years it has launched numerous small bombings, mostly in southwestern Balochistan province, but this is the first time it has claimed responsibility for an attack outside their province.

“We will continue these attacks until the government agrees to give due rights to the Baloch people for the resources extracted from their territories,” Azam said.

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao told Geo television that he had also heard that the Baloch nationalist group made telephone calls to newspapers and claimed responsibility for the attack. He said authorities were still investigating.

The Sindh provincial government announced compensation of 200,000 rupees each for the bereaved families and 25,000 for each injured person.

The US Embassy quickly warned American nationals to “avoid locations where Westerners are known to frequent throughout Pakistan until we can glean additional information on what was the exact target of the bombing.”

Karachi has been wracked by terrorist attacks in recent years. Previous bombings have been linked to extremists opposed to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s close ties to the United States.

The attack came three days before Pakistan hosts an international conference in the capital Islamabad to raise funds for victims of the Oct. 8 earthquake that killed about 86,000 people. Hundreds of US and other foreign troops are in the country helping with quake relief, and this week senior US State Department officials visited Pakistan.

— Additional input from agencies