KARACHI, 26 October — An attempt to blow up the city booking office of the Pakistan International Airlines, PIA, was foiled when police defused a powerful time bomb outside the office in southern Karachi minutes before it was set to explode. The bomb was kept in a hand bag and was placed with the glass panel of the PIA booking office. People passing through the street noticed the bag and informed the police, who, upon opening it found a bomb with timer ticking. The police defused the bomb by detaching the timer from the device. "Only five minutes were left before it would have exploded," said a senior police official. The Senior Superindent of Police, Sardar Abdul Majeed, said the one-kilogram bomb was manufactured outside Pakistan and could have played havoc had it exploded. Bomb blasts have rocked Pakistan in recent years killing many people. Most of the blasts occurred in Punjab.
