Bombings in Karachi kill eight
Blasts near Islamic school injure 42
KARACHI -- Two bombs ripped through an Islamic school yesterday, killing eight people and injuring 42 in the latest outbreak of violence gripping the southern Pakistani port.
The blasts occurred near a restaurant close to Jamia Binoria, a Sunni Muslim school in western Karachi that has thousands of students, said Fayyaz Leghari, a senior Karachi police official, who confirmed the number of casualties.
Some victims were Jamia Binoria students, but a casualty breakdown was not available.
One of those killed was a child who had been passing by with his parents, said Iqrar Abbasi, a doctor at Civil Hospital Karachi.
There was no claim of responsibility in the bombings.
A spokesman for the seminary, Ghulam Rabbani, said two blasts occurred, the first apparently intended to draw a crowd. "The first one was smaller. When people got to the site, there was another explosion," he said.
More than 100 police and paramilitary troops blocked off streets in the blast area last night. Explosives specialists defused another bomb hidden in a plastic shopping bag near the scene of last night's blasts, Leghari said.
President Pervez Musharraf condemned the attack and expressed grief over the killings, state-run Pakistan Television reported.
Musharraf appealed for residents to help keep peace in Karachi, PTV reported. Violence in revenge for attacks is common in the city.
The explosion shattered windows at the restaurant and other nearby buildings. The burned wreckage of a motorcycle in which one of the bombs was planted lay with glass and other rubble strewn on the street.
Police stepped up patrols and vehicle checks for bombs and weapons in the capital, Islamabad, said Sultan Azam Temuri, a police official there. Temuri said that the Karachi blasts were "in our mind" but that there was no specific threat of an attack in Islamabad.
Karachi, Pakistan's main port and commercial center, is thought to be a hide-out for Islamic militants, some with suspected links to Al Qaeda.
On Saturday, a bomb killed two people outside a Karachi car dealership in a part of the city where Pakistani police had arrested Al Qaeda operative Ramzi Binalshibh after a September 2002 shoot-out.
