General escapes but four die in Karachi ambush

Gunmen ambushed a Pakistani general’s convoy in the volatile city of Karachi today, killing at least four people and injuring 10.

Lieutenant General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, the Karachi corps commander was unhurt, said an army spokesman.

“He is safe. He’s in his office, but his guard and driver are injured,” said Major General Shaukat Sultan.

Hayat is the top military official in Pakistan’s largest city of 14 million people, which over the past month has been rocked by terrorist attacks and sectarian unrest that has killed dozens of people.

Police chief Syed Kamal Shah said four people were killed in the attack, including a policeman, and five injured – three policemen who were on routine patrols in the area, and two passers-by.

Malik said that the general’s vehicle had already passed by when shooting started from buildings on both sides of the road on a jeep at the end of the convoy, near the Clifton Bridge.

He said five soldiers the jeep, which had no military markings, sustained multiple gunshot wounds. Soldiers in the convoy returned fire. The wounded were transferred to a military hospital in the city in critical condition, while the general travelled on to his office.

Mohammed Hussain, a police officer, said he had spotted a bag on the road after the attack and threw it onto a plot of empty land nearby, where it exploded, hurting no-one but collapsing a ten foot high wall.

Security officials later saw another suspicious bag by the bridge which was found to have a bomb inside. It was defused.

No one claimed immediate responsibility for the attack.

Karachi has been the scene of numerous bombings and shootings blamed on Islamic militants since President General Pervez Musharraf threw Pakistan’s support behind the US-led war on terrorism in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2001.