Blast kills two in Karachi

The device went off with a defeaning sound, resident Mohammad Riffat said.

Ambulances and police reached the scene as hundreds of shopkeepers and residents went to help the victims. A senior police official on the scene, who did not want to be named, termed the incident a "terrorist" act.

"It seems that terrorists want to tarnish the image of the country as US President Bill Clinton is in Pakistan," the police officer said.

The deception began at Mumbai, where the President walked down a red carpet to a large US military C-17 transport plane and hugged the US Ambassador to India Richard Celeste and his wife, who stood with a departure delegation to bid him farewell.

Instead of boarding the cavernous plane, Clinton ducked around its nose and headed for two small Gulfstream executive jets parked on the other side, one with regular Blue-and-White US markings and the other unmarked. Brian Stafford, the Director of the US Secret Service which is responsible for protecting the President, boarded the plane with regular markings while Clinton got on the unmarked plane.

The extraordinary precautions reflect US anxiety about Clinton’s safety in a country which US officials accuse of supporting what they call "terrorist" groups in Afghanistan and where the US Embassy and American Centre were the target of November 1999 rocket attacks that injured a Pakistani security guard.