KARACHI, Pakistan - One government official said a group of militants first opened fire before detonating a bomb, comparing the explosion to a massive attack that killed 60 people at the five-star Marriott hotel in Islamabad in September 2008.Pakistan's Taliban swiftly claimed responsibility for what was a rare attack on government security forces in Karachi, a teeming city of 16 million in the south of the country far removed from militant strongholds in the northwest.
Karachi is Pakistan's economic capital, home to its stock exchange and the Arabian Sea port where NATO supplies dock to be trucked overland to support the more than 150,000 US-led troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.- Witnesses and police said the building, which belonged to the police's Crime Investigation Department (CID), collapsed trapping people under the rubble.
- An AFP reporter saw dozens of vehicles destroyed and damaged after the attack as rescue workers stretchered casualties into ambulances.
- The police chief of Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital, said 18 people were killed and that the attackers dismantled the security cordon at the department by opening fire on police.
- "There was an exchange of fire between police and militants. Then it was followed by a truck loaded with explosives," Salahuddin Babar Khattak told reporters at the scene.
- "We don't know how many people (militants) were there, but the exchange of fire lasted for some time."
- The CID building was used to hold militants in custody, he said, but no important suspect was in detention at the time of the attack.
"They hit the building with the car full of explosives," said Zulfiqar Mirza, the interior minister of Sindh.- "It was a huge blast, which created a big crater, a bit like the Islamabad Marriott hotel," he added.
- Sharmilla Farooqi, a spokeswoman for the Sindh government, earlier told AFP that 15 people were killed and around 100 wounded.
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