A Taliban suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives
Monday outside the home of a senior police officer tasked with cracking
down on militants in Pakistan's largest city. The blast killed at least
eight people and left a crater 10 feet (3 meters) deep, police said.
The
Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the early morning attack
in the southern port city of Karachi. The target of the bombing,
Chaudhry Aslam, escaped unscathed and said he would not be cowed by the
attack.
"This is a cowardly act," Aslam told local television. "I'm not scared. I will not spare them."
The
eight people killed included six policemen guarding Aslam's house and a
mother and daughter who were passing by, said Aslam. He estimated that
at least 440 pounds (200 kilograms) of explosives were used in the
attack.
The death toll could have been even worse if it had
happened a few minutes later when many children would have been headed
to schools located near Aslam's house in the Defense neighborhood of
Karachi, an upscale residential area that rarely experiences militant
attacks or other forms of violence that plague the city.
"Thank
God it was half an hour before school time," said former Pakistani
cricket team captain Moin Khan, who passed by the site of the attack
shortly after the blast.
"It was horrible. I saw four bodies," said Khan. "Broken pieces of vehicles were scattered more than 100 feet."
Local
television footage showed extensive damage from the blast. The fronts
of several two-story concrete buildings were totally blown away. Rubble
littered the streets amid the burned wreckage of cars hit by the
explosion.
Aslam is a top police officer in the Crime
Investigation Department, which works to arrest Taliban fighters and
other militants in Karachi, a bustling city that is home to some 18
million people and is also Pakistan's main commercial hub.
Karachi
has not seen as many militant attacks as other major cities in
Pakistan, but it is believed to be home to many Taliban militants who
have fled army operations in the northwest near the Afghan border.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for Monday's attack.
"We
will continue targeting all such officers who are involved in the
killing of our comrades," Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone
from an undisclosed location.
Also Monday, Pakistani intelligence
officials said soldiers seized the wreckage of a suspected U.S. drone
that crashed in the South Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border
and was initially snatched by the Taliban.
Troops fought the
militants for roughly 24 hours and eventually called in helicopter
gunships to wrest control of the wreckage, said the officials, speaking
on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to
the media. Eight militants were killed and three soldiers were wounded
in the fighting, they said.
Ahsan, the Taliban spokesman,
confirmed the army had seized control of the wreckage but denied any
militants died in the fighting. He claimed the Taliban shot down the
drone Saturday night using an anti-aircraft gun.
Intelligence officials said army engineers were inspecting the wreckage to determine the cause of the crash.
Neither the army nor the U.S. Embassy has responded to requests for comment on the crash.
The
U.S. normally does not acknowledge the covert CIA-run drone program in
Pakistan, but U.S. officials have said privately that the attacks have
killed many high-level militants. Drone crashes have happened before in
Pakistan, but they are rare. AP
