KARACHI, 17 January 2004 — Police tightened security around Pakistani churches and mosques yesterday after a powerful car bomb exploded outside a Christian reading, injuring 15 people and causing heavy damage.
Police recorded statements from 13 witnesses and hoped to identify the culprits in Thursday’s attack through security cameras at a nearby intersection. Sketches of two possible suspects were released and a 1 million rupees ($17,500) reward was offered for information leading to arrests.
Fearing a surge in sectarian violence, the Interior Ministry ordered provincial governments to increase security around churches and mosques, said ministry spokesman Abdur Rauf Chaudhry. An anonymous caller told a hospital to get ready for bodies moments before the bomb exploded, police said yesterday.
The attack was the first anti-Christian violence since a spate of deadly hits on Christian and Western targets in 2002, four of them in Karachi.
“It was a terrorist attack,” Sindh provincial police chief Syed Kamal Shah said.
Senior police officer Munir Sheikh, who was among the wounded, said the phone call was made to Karachi’s Jinnah hospital only seconds before the car-bomb explosion.
“Prepare the beds, you are about to receive a stream of bodies of policemen,” the anonymous caller told the hospital, according to Sheikh.
The bomb used on Thursday was made of fertilizer, a senior police officer said.
“Initial investigations suggest it was a fertilizer bomb very much similar to what was used in the US Consulate attack,” said the officer.
A Christian leader met the governor of Sindh province and later said at a news conference that he was “dissatisfied” with security at religious sites.
