Asia-Pacific

Explosion at Karachi house kills at least 8

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-01-08 20:55

Explosion at Karachi house kills at least 8

Security officials survey while rescue workers shift a dead body at a collapsed house following an explosion in Karachi January 8, 2010. [Photo/Agencies]

KARACHI, Pakistan: A blast apparently caused by a suicide vest stored in a house in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi killed eight suspected militants Friday, underscoring the city's use by insurgents bent on destabilizing the nuclear-armed, US-allied country.

The explosion occurred in Baldia, a mostly ethnic Pashtun neighborhood that is a suspected Taliban hide-out, police Chief Wasim Ahmad told The Associated Press. Its exact cause was unclear. TV footage showed police seizing guns, suicide vests and grenades from the site.

Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik said some people from the Swat Valley, a region where the army has waged an offensive against the Taliban, were believed to have been staying at the house along with some guests, but he stressed the investigation was ongoing.

Local resident Noor Mohammed said he rushed to the scene just after the explosion and saw some of the dead men were wearing camouflage jackets. He said some men moved into the house about three months ago.

Blood was splattered around the walls of the front room of the house, whose roof and walls were damaged. Some body parts were visible in the rubble.

Senior police official Raja Omar Khatab said the blast may have been caused by a jacket laced with explosives that is used by suicide attackers. Police found militant literature, but it was unclear who the suspects were working for, he said.

Fayyaz Khan, another senior police officer, said eight bodies were recovered and at least two people taken into custody at the scene.

On December 28, a bomb attack on a minority Shiite Muslim religious procession in Karachi killed 43 people and wounded dozens. But the city, Pakistan's most populous, has largely been spared the Taliban-linked violence that has struck much of the rest of the country, something analysts say may be because of the group's tendency to use it as a place to rest and raise money.

Still, Karachi has a long history of violence, much of it driven by ethnic hatred between Pashtuns and Urdu-speaking descendants of refugees from British-colonial India.