Less than a day after US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld left the country, a car bomb today killed 11 Pakistanis outside the US consulate here. The blast, said the police, looked like a suicide bombing, similar to an attack on May 8 outside a nearby hotel that killed 11 French engineers and two Pakistanis. The message to General Pervez Musharraf was clear though the messenger remains, as yet, unidentified.And even as the US immediately ordered the closure of its embassy in Islamabad and all its consulates in Pakistan on Friday and through the weekend, Pakistani political observers were quick to point out that it was a ‘‘backlash’’ which Musharraf had invited upon his regime for joining the ‘‘war against terrorism’’.Hamid Haroon, publisher of the English daily Dawn, told a TV news channel that the attack showed Pakistan was as much a victim of terrorism as anyone else, and that India and the US should understand the problems Musharraf faced in his efforts to reign in Islamic radicals.Musharraf had abandoned his Taliban allies in Afghanistan to become a key US ally after September 11, a move that sparked violent reaction from Islamic radicals at home. The militant groups were further angered when he launched a crackdown on them in January. That followed a bloody attack on India’s Parliament, blamed by New Delhi on the Pakistan-based militants, which took the two countries to the brink of war. Now, he has been under pressure to prevent infiltration across the Line of Control into India and there have been indications that he has taken some measures, much to the anger of the militant groups.‘‘It’s a very sad and a very regrettable incident that we condemn fully,’’ India’s external affairs minister Jaswant Singh told reporters in New Delhi about the Karachi bombing. ‘‘I am really grieved and unhappy that yet another terrorist activity of a suicide bomb variety has taken place in Karachi.’’No one claimed responsibility but Musharraf’s spokesman, Major-General Rashid Qureshi, threw dark hints about a foreign intelligence agency (read India’s RAW) though he said he could not rule out the hand of Islamic radicals. Speaking to CNN, he said he wasn’t even sure if the consulate was the target. ‘‘We are investigating all angles, including whether there were any foreign intelligence agencies involved, because we have indications that there are attempts to destabilise Pakistan and Pakistan’s economy by scaring away investments.,’’ he said.A spokesman for the US embassy in Islamabad, Mark Wentworth, said no foreigners or staff at the consulate were killed in the explosion, although one American and five Pakistani employees received minor injuries when struck by flying debris.Twenty other people outside the consulate were wounded by the blast, which left a crater several feet deep and destroyed a guard post and part of a concrete wall surrounding the building.The blast blew in the windows of the consulate and surrounding buildings, including the upmarket Marriott Hotel next door, destroyed around 20 cars and scattered body parts 100-200 metres down the road.It’s the fourth attack this year apparently aimed at foreigners in Pakistan, after the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl in January, a grenade attack on a church in Islamabad in March that killed five people, including three foreigners, and the earlier bombing in Karchi.Police said they believed the bomb was in a white, Suzuki van which was being driven past the consulate at the time of the attack. (Reuters)
