KARACHI, 10 April 2004 — The United States has warned its citizens of the possibility of additional attacks on US targets in Pakistan.
The US Consulate in Karachi said a series of recent attacks and attempted attacks in and around the southern city indicated that extremists may be plotting additional strikes, particularly against so-called “soft targets.”
The warning, issued through a warden message this week, reminds Americans that on March 15 terrorist parked an explosive-laden vehicle outside the US Consulate in Karachi. The vehicle was spotted in time and the explosives were defused by the local police.
A warden message is an informal communication network that US embassies use to convey emergency messages to US citizens residing abroad.
As reminder of ongoing violence in Pakistan, the message mentions an attack on a Pakistani Ranger checkpoint on Karachi’s main highway on March 19, which killed two persons, and another attack on a police station near the Karachi airport on April 4, which killed five policemen.
Such attacks underscored the real possibility of additional acts of terror that could target US government or private American interests in Karachi, particularly those that are soft, vulnerable, and unprepared, the message said.
The consulate advised US institutions in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan to bolster their vigilance and strengthen their security precautions.
The consulate also advised Americans in these two provinces to remain aware of their surroundings; and to be unpredictable in choosing travel times and routes, shopping locales, and places for relaxation.
Police meanwhile said it had busted at least 12 terrorist groups and arrested more than 70 of their members since the summer of 2002, when the city was rocked by bomb attacks at the US Consulate and Sheraton Hotel.
Syed Kamal Shah, chief of Sindh police, told a private television channel that Pakistani police had also arrested 86 people belonging to different sectarian groups in the last two years.
Karachi police last week arrested nine suspected terrorists, including the mastermind of the 2002 bomb attacks on the US Consulate and Sheraton Hotel in Karachi.
At least 12 people were killed when a car bomb exploded outside the US Consulate in June 2002. A month earlier, a suicide bomber had killed 14 people, including 11 French defense technicians, when he rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a bus.
Karachi, the country’s main business center, is home to more than 14 million people — mostly Urdu-speaking Muslims who have migrated from India after partition of the subcontinent in 1947.
The city has been the hotbed of ethnic and sectarian violence since 1980s, which reached alarming proportions in the mid-1990s.
