Twelve people were injured today when two bombs exploded in Pakistan's southern port of Karachi a day ahead of a city-wide protest strike, police said.
One bomb, which injured four people when it exploded, had been planted in a bag outside a juice shop in the Nursery area of eastern Karachi, city police chief Mr Tariq Jamil said.
The second blast occurred shortly afterwards in the Empress vegetable market in the city's southern commercial district. It injured seven men and a woman, police said.
The blasts occurred a day ahead of a city-wide strike called by the powerful Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) ethnic group to protest the failure of authorities to make arrests for the assassination last week of two MQM leaders.
Ex-National Assembly member Mr Nishat Mallick and former senator Mr Mustafa Kamal were driving from the MQM's Karachi offices when they were gunned down by unknown attackers last Saturday.
The latest blasts have provoked a major security alert in the city.
Brigadier Mukhtar Shaikh, the home secretary of Pakistan's southern Sindh province, said it was too early to link the explosions to the strike, but troops had been deployed as a precautionary measure.
AFP