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Pakistan shaken by series of bomb blasts

Pakistan’s largest port city Karachi was shaken yesterday by a series of bomb blasts that injured over two dozen people, with at least one confirmed dead, police and paramedic sources said yesterday.

The five blasts occurred within a span of one hour in the densely populated northern and central parts of the city, consisting mostly of working class people.

Two bombs exploded in Orangi town’s Banaras area, dominated by ethnic Pashtun immigrants from the restive Northwest Frontier Province.

A third occurred in Qasba Colony, also mostly inhabited by Pashtuns.

The other two took place in central parts of the city, including near a private hospital.

Meanwhile, Pakistani investigators scouring the scene of a weekend suicide bomb attack on police found a severed head yesterday as the leader of the ruling party said his government would do everything to stop the bombers.

The toll from Sunday’s attack on police, who had been guarding Islamists marking the anniversary of an army commando raid on Islamabad’s Red Mosque, rose to 16 as one of around 50 of the wounded died, police said.

The attack has raised questions about the new government’s policy of trying to end militant violence through negotiations and increased concern about prospects for the country, a nuclear-armed US ally making a transition to civilian rule.

The government is led by the Pakistan People’s Party of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi on Dec. 27.

The blast happened several hundred meters from the Red Mosque, shortly after a tightly guarded meeting of Islamists there had ended.
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