KARACHI, 21 September 2003 — Police said yesterday that a bomb explosion in a building in the Pakistani port city of Karachi appeared to have been motivated by a business dispute.
An explosive device, hidden in a trash can on the 10th floor of the office building, exploded late Friday, smashing windows and other property but causing no deaths.
The blast sparked fears of a terrorist attack. The city of 14 million people has seen a string of bombings, including in June last year when a suicide attack killed 14 Pakistanis in front of the US Consulate, and a month earlier, when a bombing killed 11 French engineers.
Friday’s bombing occurred in the evening when most offices in the building were already closed. Five people received minor injuries.
“Taking all aspects into account, we reached the conclusion that it (the explosion) was due to some internal business rift,” provincial police chief Syed Kamal Shah told The Associated Press.
He said the same building was targeted in July, when a low-intensity bomb planted near the entrance killed two security guards.
“Again now late evening was selected when almost all offices were closed,” Shah added. “Terrorists target human lives, not commercial interests of an individual, and in this case only commercial interests of the owner were the target.”
Police said they wanted to interview the owner of the building and question him over who may be behind the blast.
“So far no one has been arrested or detained over the blast, which apparently seems to be linked with some internal dispute of Kawish Crown Plaza,” Karachi police chief Asad Ashraf Malik said.
Despite the statements by top police officers, the damage has been done. South Africa announced that it would not send its cricket team to tour Pakistan.
The South Africans, who would have been the first Western team to return to Pakistan after a chain of terror strikes kept foreign players away for 15 months, only gave the green light for the tour after a security assessment last week.
Friday’s bomb was homemade, weighed five kilograms (11 pounds) and was fitted with a timer, police said.
The commercial capital of Pakistan has been riven by ethnic and sectarian violence since the early 1990s. US journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered there.
Also in 2002, seven Christian aid workers were shot dead in their downtown office and three people were murdered in the honorary Macedonian consulate.
Scores of Al-Qaeda operatives have taken refuge in crowded Karachi, once a popular transit point for militants traveling to Afghanistan to train in Al-Qaeda camps during the Taleban’s 1996-2001 regime.
