KARACHI, 11 November 2003 — Police yesterday beefed up security around diplomatic missions and foreign interests in southern port city Karachi following the weekend suicide bombing that killed at least 17 people in Riyadh.
“We have increased patrols and have deployed extra forces around foreign missions in particular after Sunday’s bombing in Riyadh,” police chief of southern Sindh province Syed Kamal Shah told AFP.
Shah warned last month that suicide attacks were possible in Karachi, where two suicide car bomb blasts last year killed 26 people including 11 French naval engineers and where US journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and killed.
Security has been particularly tightened around the Saudi, US and British consulates. The US Consulate was targeted in one of last year’s attacks, in which 12 Pakistanis were killed. Some 2,000 police and plainclothes intelligence officers are on “alert” around the clock in Karachi, city police chief Tariq Jamil told AFP. “There is a high alert security for consulates, diplomats and foreign interests in Karachi,” he said. Pakistan has conveyed sympathies and condolences to the Saudi government over Saturday night’s attack.
“No country in the world is safe from the dark designs of terrorists, therefore the international community should step up its efforts to fight the threat of terrorism in all its forms and many manifestations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan told a press briefing yesterday.
Pakistan Grills Detained
British Al-Qaeda Suspect
Pakistani authorities are interrogating a British national suspected of links to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda terror network, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday.
Tariq Mahmood, who has dual British and Pakistani nationality, has been “detained by our authorities,” spokesman Masood Khan told reporters.
“He is being investigated on suspicion of having links with Al-Qaeda ... I cannot tell you his whereabouts and how the investigations are being carried out.”
Mahmood was arrested late October from a house in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, next to Islamabad. The British Embassy was aware of the arrest and was seeking further information from Pakistani authorities, spokesman Tim Handley told AFP last month. Pakistan, a key US ally in the 23-month-old war against terrorism, has arrested more than 500 Al-Qaeda suspects on its soil, including three key Bin Laden associates. The majority of those arrested are now in US custody at the US Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba.
