KARACHI: A bomb in Pakistan’s commercial capital Karachi wounded at least 19 people on Saturday, police said, in an apparent attack on Shiites ahead of one of their most important religious occasion.
The explosion took place outside a Shiite gathering just before the start of Ashura, the Shiite calendar’s biggest event, which has become a flashpoint for deadly attacks over recent years.
Senior Police Superintendent Raja Umer Khattab said two policemen were wounded in the blast caused by a homemade bomb.
“It looks like a remote controlled or a time device as the blast took place along the roadside,” he said. Police suspected earlier that it was a car bomb.
Police have stepped up security in the runup to Ashura on Monday. The event draws thousands of people onto the streets in cities across Pakistan.
Pakistani authorities are already struggling to show they can contain militants who have killed hundreds of people in bombings since an offensive launched on one of the militants’ strongholds in October.
Earlier on Saturday an official said that the Taleban had planned to use the five Americans, now detained in Pakistan, to carry out attacks inside the country. The northwest city of Peshawar has been hit hardest by the recent spate of bombings but the militants have extended their reach as far a Karachi and the capital Islamabad.
The case of five Americans detained in Pakistan who are suspected of using the Internet to contact Taleban insurgents suggests the task of containing militants could get more complicated for Pakistani authorities.
Usman Anwar, police chief in Sargodha, where the Americans were detained, said e-mails had revealed plans for the young men from Virginia to travel to a Pakistani nuclear power plant. “We believe that they were supposed to be used inside Pakistan,” Anwar said.
“In their last e-mail to the Taleban, we found they mentioned the Chashma Nuclear Plant and that’s why they were going to Mianwali (district).”
They were arrested in Sargodha, home to one of Pakistan’s biggest airbases, 190 km southeast of Islamabad. Two are of Pakistani ancestry, one of Egyptian, one of Yemeni and one of Eritrean and all may face terrorism charges.
US drone aircraft attacks on suspected militants on Pakistani soil have underscored growing US security concerns in a strategic region, where failure to bring stability could harm Barack Obama’s US presidency. But the strikes have infuriated many Pakistanis and more pressure on Islamabad to root wipe put militants could backfire by spreading already strong anti-American sentiment.
A drone aircraft attacked a suspected militant target in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing five people, intelligence officials said. Two missiles hit a house in North Waziristan in the attack. Two people were wounded, the officials said.
Local officials said on Saturday militants killed Gul Mohammad, a commander of an anti-Taleban militia, and dumped his beheaded body on a roadside in the Bajaur tribal district on the border with Afghanistan. A note was left warning that others could suffer the same fate, the officials said.
