Pakistani police confirmed an attempted robbery on a Qatari mission vehicle in the southern city of Karachi but gave conflicting accounts on whether any diplomats were directly targeted.
The Qatar News Agency said the assailant tried to open the car door Saturday, then fired shots at the vehicle from a pistol. The Qatari official was accompanied by Oman’s consul and the deputy consul for Kuwait, but no one was injured, the agency said.
Fayyaz Leghri, the top police official in Sindh province, said armed robbers went after an escort vehicle in the Qatari consul’s convoy. But the consul himself was not directly targeted, said Leghri, who did not say if shots were fired or if any other diplomats were in other vehicles in the convoy.
However, another senior Pakistani police official said two armed men on a motorcycle held up a van carrying the consul. A police guard in the vehicle gave them some money and a cell phone.
As the robbers sped away, one fired a bullet at the van, hitting it from behind, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. He said other diplomats were believed to be in the van, but he did not know who. An American CIA security contractor is on trial in Pakistan after shooting dead two men in the eastern city of Lahore whom he alleges were trying to rob him.
The US claims the contractor has diplomatic immunity from prosecution, but Pakistan’s government has said the matter is up to the courts, a stance that has further strained the counterterrorism allies’ rocky relationship.
