PAKISTAN: A suicide bomber in a car packed with explosives killed 11 French navy experts, two Pakistanis and himself outside a hotel in Karachi yesterday.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but France's military chief of staff said the al-Qaeda network, led by Osama bin Laden, was probably involved, echoing statements made by Pakistani police.
The bomb exploded at 8 a.m. outside the Sheraton Hotel as the bus with French workers was about to leave for a dockyard where they were helping to build two submarines.
Minutes later and the victims might have included the Pakistani cricket team as well as the touring New Zealand side, who were about to leave from a nearby hotel for a test match.
President Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup but has since become a key US ally in the war on terror, summoned ministers and security officials to an emergency meeting.
"The president condemned the dastardly act and said that Pakistan is being subjected to a systematic campaign of killing for its bold and courageous stand against international terrorism," the Information Minister, Mr Nisar Memon, said.
Gen Musharraf won a controversial referendum last week to extend his rule, but his alliance with Washington has angered extremists at home, who have been blamed for a series of attacks in Pakistan this year.
Yesterday's explosion filled the air with smoke and reduced the bus to a blackened skeleton, blew out hotel windows and scattered body parts across the street.
Mr Nadeem Mustafa Khan, director-general of the Aga Khan hospital in Karachi, said there were 22 people wounded in the bombing, including 12 Frenchmen being treated at his hospital.
"I am reasonably confident they are out of danger," he said shortly after meeting the French ambassador to Pakistan.
President Jacques Chirac condemned the bombing as "a murderous, cowardly, odious terrorist attack" and called on Pakistan to take measures to protect the French community.
"It's a little early to say, but there is a significant likelihood" of al-Qaeda involvement in the attack, the French Chief of Staff, Gen Jean-Pierre Kelche, said.
He said the bombers had targeted the West in general and specifically countries, such as France, taking part in the US-led coalition fighting al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists in Afghanistan.
The bombing, in the same city where murdered US reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in January, is likely to add to pressure on President Musharraf to follow through on a promise to crack down on militants in Pakistan.
Gen Musharraf said the act was aimed at disrupting Pakistan's economic recovery, creating a wedge between Pakistan and France, and weakening the country's defences.
Police and officials also pointed the finger of blame at India.
Mr Memon said the authorities "did not rule out the possibility of a foreign hand from across the eastern borders from a country perpetually inimical to Pakistan".
Pakistan often accuses Indian intelligence agents of planting bombs and sowing disorder.
India dismissed the allegation, and condemned the bomb attack. "We treat it (the allegation) with the disdain it fully deserves. It is totally and completely baseless," a foreign ministry spokeswoman said in New Delhi.
The respected Human Rights Commission of Pakistan blamed Islamic extremists and said Gen Musharraf's much-vaunted crackdown on militancy had not been genuine or effective.
"Unless a genuine commitment is shown to tackling militancy rather than making merely cosmetic gestures under international pressure and rounding up low-level activists . . . violence will continue to grow," it said.
Suicide bomb attacks are almost unheard of in Pakistan, although violence by Islamic extremists is a regular part of life for Karachi's 14 million people.
Officials said members of the Pakistan and New Zealand cricket teams were safe, although the visitors' liaison officer was taken to hospital after suffering a heart attack. New Zealand cricket authorities immediately abandoned the tour and called the team home.