SUICIDE BOMBER KILL ELEVEN FRENCH NAVAL WORKERS IN KARACHI
KARACHI, 8 May (IPS) Thirteen people, at least eleven of them
French, and two Pakistanis were killed and eighteen others were injured, some of
them seriously, in a suicide car bombing blast outside Karachi’s Sheraton
Hotel today, police said.
Pakistani President Parviz Mosharraf telephoned his French counterpart Jacques Chirac on Wednesday and offered deep condolences over this tragic incident and promised to carry out a vigorous and full-scale investigation to trace the culprits", a spokesman for the Pakistani President said.
The just re-elected Chirac, while dispatching his new Defence Minister Mrs. Michele Alliot Marie – France’s first female to be named at this job --, reaffirmed "France's determination to do everything possible to fight international terrorism" and asked President Mosharraf to find those responsible for the bombing and punish them for the "cowardly crime".
The suicide bombing operation, a trade mark of Islamist terror groups, is the first major challenge the new centre-right French government led by Mr. Jean Pierre Raffarin is facing, as a counter-terrorist source told Iran Press Service in Paris that the operation was "definitely" a warning to France for its military co-operation with Pakistan, as Islamabad had firmly sided with the United States and the West in the war against international terrorism".
The French conservative leader also expressed his condolences to the families of those who died, and called on the Pakistani authorities to "take the necessary security measures for the French community, and to do everything possible to find and punish those responsible for this terrorist act."
Appearing on the State television, President Mosharraf said his country was under attack from "international terrorism" and later, told his security chiefs on Wednesday that Pakistan was being subjected to a systematic terrorist campaign", said an official statement released after the President met his security and intelligence advisers.
"It was a security-related meeting and the Karachi terrorist incident came under detailed discussion. The meeting was attended by senior military and civil officials and lasted for three hours."
The 11 French nationals killed in a bomb blast today were working on a joint Franco-Pakistani project to build three Agosta 90B class submarines, the Karachi chief of France's naval construction unit told AFP.
"The country isn't very stable, but we never had the slightest problem, nor the slightest indication to take precautions, the French news agency quoted Mr.Gerard Clermont of the Direction des Constructions Navales (DCN). "We are appalled -- everyone is in shock," said Clermont, who was in France when the blast occurred early today.
A total 23 DCN employees were on the Pakistan navy minibus outside Karachi's Sheraton Hotel when a car packed with explosives ploughed into it, killing 11 Frenchmen and two Pakistanis and injuring 24 people, half of them French.
The employees -- engineers, technicians, or factory workers -- mainly from the western city of Brest and the Channel port of Cherbourg, where the DCN, a shipbuilder, which is part of the French Defence Ministry, has installations.
DCN said in a statement it was recalling temporary expatriate staff. French sources said a source for the company, which has 80 people working on the project in Karachi.
Embassy officials have confirmed the deaths. "The area has been cordoned off by the police. The blast site is littered with human blood and parts of bodies", said senior police officer Zubair Mahmood. "Glass is scattered everywhere. Many cars which had been parked in the hotel were also damaged."
The DCN, which employs more than 15,000 people, set up a crisis centre following the suicide attack to comfort friends and family of the victims.
A total of 40 French nationals were sent to Karachi to work on the submarine project, following the signing of a contract on September 21, 1994 that called for the joint construction of three submarines.
The first of the submarines, built in Cherbourg, was delivered to Pakistan in 1999 and inducted into the Pakistani navy that same year.
The second of the submarines -- set to go into service this year -- was to be built in France but assembled in Karachi, while the third -- set to go into service in 2005 -- was to be entirely built in the Pakistani port.
Police said today they would investigate possible "Al-Qa’eda" links to the massive car bomb. Sindh provincial police chief Kamal Shah said a "foreign hand" appeared to be behind the terrorist attack, adding that Osama Ben Laden's Al-Qa’eda network or saboteurs from rival India could be involved.
Al-Qa’eda is the Islamic terror organisation that is believed to have carried out the 11 September attacks on New York’s Trade World Centre and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.
"We will investigate the possible involvement of Al-Qa’eda," said Shah, adding that the attack was "an act of sabotage" designed to drive away foreign investment. As India rejected any involvement in the car blast, French armed forces chief of staff General Jean-Pierre Kelche said today there was a "significant likelihood" the Al-Qa’eda network carried out the car bombing in Pakistan.
Shah also said that Karachi Police might seek assistance of French anti-terrorism experts to investigate the suicide bomb attack. "We may seek international help to investigate the case and it is likely that French people may also help us", he told journalists at the site of the bomb blast outside the Sheraton Hotel on Club Road.
Pakistan routinely blames intelligence agents from India for bomb attacks here, but suicide bombings are rare and foreigners are hardly ever targeted. The force of Wednesday's blast, which shredded a minibus carrying the French and blew the bomber's car some 50 meters (150 feet) away, is also much stronger than most sectarian attacks.
To delve into the real causes and those who were involved behind the bombing, investigative teams have been formed, said Kamal Shah, adding that yet it was not sure whether suicide bombers were Pakistanis or foreigners and for this end the probing teams were busy to dig out the facts pertaining the incident. said.
President Chirac said France acknowledged the difficulties facing Pakistan after it joined the international coalition against terrorism in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States, the spokesman said.
He told Mosharraf that Pakistan was playing a key role in the fight against terrorists and that France would be happy to assist Pakistani police in their investigation into the blast in any way it could.
Singapore Airlines said on Wednesday it was suspending flights to Pakistan after a car bomb explosion killed at least 14 people, including 10 French nationals, in Karachi.
"Because of the prevailing security situation in Pakistan, Singapore Airlines (SIA) will suspend its services to Karachi and Lahore from Friday 10 May until further notice," the airline said in a statement.
In another development, a rocket hit a building housing US agents hunting for Al-Qa’eda and Taleban fugitives in Pakistan's north western tribal frontier but caused no casualties, sources said on Wednesday.
"The rocket, the second in about a week, destroyed the boundary wall of the vocational training institute in Miranshah but no one was injured," said the official, who refused to be identified.
Bomb blasts are not unusual in Karachi, which is torn by religious and political strife.
In March, a grenade attack on a church near the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad left five people dead, including two Americans -- the wife and daughter of a U.S. diplomat.
Recently, a series of bomb blasts injured a dozen people following last week's referendum granting Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, another five years in power.
Karachi is also where Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and later killed earlier this year.
Many Pakistanis have criticised Mosharraf's willingness to aid the United States in its successful effort to remove the Taleban regime and the Al-Qa’eda from neighbouring Afghanistan. ENDS PAKISTAN BOMB BLAST 8502