Car bomb found outside US consulate in Pakistan
AFP, Karachi
Pakistani police narrowly prevented a huge car bomb exploding outside the US consulate in Karachi yesterday just two days before US Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to the country and almost two years after a deadly attack on the same building.Around 650 litres of chemical explosives, a timer and two detonators were found in a Suzuki van left outside the tightly guarded consulate building by two men at around 7:30am (0230 GMT), police said. The device was set to explode some 20 minutes after bomb experts defused it, the violence-prone southern city's police investigations chief Fayyaz Leghari told AFP. "The chemicals used in the car were of three kinds: hydrogen peroxide, ammonium nitrate, and nitrogen oxide, which could have caused a huge fire had they exploded," Leghari said. "The timer showed a 20-minute margin as bomb disposal experts defused it." Police called it an attempted terrorist attack. "The purpose was to create harassment and terrorism," provincial police chief Kamal Shah told AFP. The attempted attack came two days before Powell's two-day visit to the capital Islamabad, 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) north of Karachi, for talks on the war against terrorism, peace moves with India and nuclear proliferation. Powell was not scheduled to visit Karachi.
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