A roadside bomb hit a bus carrying Pakistani Navy officials in the port city of Karachi on Thursday, killing three people and wounding at least seven, officials said. It was the third attack on the Navy in less than a week.
The bomb was planted on the roadside in busy Faisal Avenue and detonated remotely as the bus drove past in Pakistan’s politically tense economic capital, used by NATO to ship supplies to troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan Navy spokesman Commander Salman Ali said two Navy officials aboard the bus were killed and seven were injured. A hospital official said a passerby was also killed.
"The bus was taking navy officers to a dockyard when a planted bomb exploded nearby," senior police official Tahir Navaid told Reuters. A civilian car and motorcycle were also damaged.
About three kilograms of explosives were packed into the bomb, which was detonated remotely, senior police official Iftikhar Tarar told Agence-France Presse.
He said the blast appeared to be the work of the same group behind twin bombings on Tuesday that killed four Navy officials and wounded nearly 60 people in the worst attack on military officials in Karachi in years.
Authorities had blamed extremist Islamist organizations linked to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, such as Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, which was involved in the Karachi kidnap and beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.
The rare attacks on Pakistan’s Navy came just days after army chief General Ashfaq Kayani claimed the military had "broken the back" of Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked militants despite US criticism to the contrary, according to AFP.
Bomb attacks across Pakistan have killed more than 4,240 people since July 2007, and the United States considers Pakistan’s northwestern border areas with Afghanistan the global headquarters of Al Qaeda.
Karachi is Pakistan’s biggest city and commercial hub. It is also home to the main base of the Pakistani Navy. It is the most populous Pakistani cities with an estimated population of 12.5 million people.
Home to Pakistan’s stock exchange and a lifeline for a depressed economy wilting under inflation and stagnating foreign investment, Karachi had been sheltered from the worst of the violence blamed on Islamist militants.
But rivalries between the Urdu-speaking majority and an influx of Pashtuns from the northwest have fuelled outbreaks of political violence that killed more than 150 people in 2010 in this city of 16 million.
Pakistan is a key ally of the United States against the Taliban but deep mistrust between the two countries’ intelligence agencies was laid bare this week with the leak of a 2007 US list of "terrorist and terrorist support entities" that included Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Islamabad has received billions of dollars in US aid in the past decade and bristles at suggestions it is playing a double game.