KARACHI, 9 May — Like every workday, Frenchman Gilles Sanson was on the bus going to his construction job on the naval base in Karachi. But this time he almost didn’t make it back alive.
"Everybody shook my hands as they were getting on the bus," said Sanson, lying bandaged and bloodied in Karachi’s Aga Khan hospital. "The door had just closed again when it happened."
"It was a fearsome explosion" that tore through the bus when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-packed car into it yesterday, killing 11 of Sanson’s colleagues and three others. "I didn’t see a thing," he said. "I thought the bomb had been placed under the bus."
The terror was horrifying. Moments seemed like hours as he lay in the wreckage, waiting for help to arrive, and then waiting as they sped him to hospital. "I only thought about staying conscious, and not losing too much blood. You know — the fear of dying," he said. Sanson began to cry as he told his story, and asked for a phone to call his family.
The 40-year-old works for a state-owned French company which helps Pakistan build submarines at the southern port of Karachi. He arrived here for a nine-week mission. He said that, as usual, an armed guard was seated next to the driver — a necessity in a country where attacks on foreigners have been on the rise.
The car which carried the bomb landed almost 30 meters away, unrecognizable except as fragments of jagged metal. Worst of all were the body parts and blood, which flew down the road, splattering the ground and striking street signs and nearby vehicles.
"When I turned around, I saw a piece of human flesh over the canopy of the traffic signal. I felt sick and left the place," said a traffic policeman. "I saw two parts of a body lying on the road, until ambulance workers removed it," said one person who arrived at the scene shortly after the blast. "Volunteers and ambulance workers collected body parts from the bus, bodies were torn into pieces."
Windows at the 400-room, 10-story Sheraton hotel, the nearby Pearl Continental (PC) Hotel and surrounding shops were blown out. Debris and broken glass was strewn everywhere.
"I heard a deafening sound. I started running the other way. When I turned back to have a look, I saw a human leg, just a few meters from me," said a car washer at the PC Hotel. "There was a big cloud of smoke...I was scared to death."
The Navy bus seems to have been a soft target. Every day it followed the same route and picked up the French engineers — who were helping Pakistan build two submarines — from their hotels at the same time, said a foreign businessman who had met some of the victims.
By the time the bus reached the Sheraton, its last stop, it was generally full. "It was the perfect target. Each day they would pick up two or three men from the Sheraton and then drive on," said the businessman. "There were no different routes, people would walk out of the hotel and down to the road and get picked up there."
