KARACHI, Pakistan – Two bombs ripped through an Islamic school Sunday in Pakistan, killing eight and injuring 42 in the latest outbreak of violence gripping the southern port city of Karachi.
The blasts went off near a restaurant close to Jamia Binoria in western Karachi (search), a Sunni Muslim school where thousands study, said Fayyaz Leghari, a senior Karachi police official.
There was no claim of responsibility.
Eight people died and 42 others were injured, Leghari said. Some were Jamia Binoria (search) students, but no casualty breakdown was available.
One of the dead was a child who'd been passing by with his parents, said Iqrar Abbasi, a doctor at Civil Hospital Karachi.
A spokesman for the seminary, Ghulam Rabbani, said there were two explosions — the first apparently intended to draw a crowd.
"The first one was smaller. When people got to the site there was another explosion," he said.
Officials earlier reported the explosion was near Jamia Islamia Binori Town (search), a prominent seminary that had links with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But Jamia Binoria, where two explosions occurred, is a different school located near an industrial area in Karachi.
More than 100 police and paramilitary troops blocked off streets in the blast area Sunday night. Explosive experts defused another bomb hidden in a plastic shopping bag near the scene of Sunday night's blasts, Leghari said.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf (search) condemned the attack and expressed grief over the killings, state-run Pakistan Television reported.
Musharraf appealed for people to help keep peace in Karachi, PTV reported. Violence in revenge for attacks is common in the city.
The explosion shattered windows at the restaurant and other nearby buildings. The burned wreckage of the motorcycle in which one of the bombs was planted lay with glass and other pieces of rubble strewn around on the street.
"We were drinking tea in the restaurant when the first bomb exploded. We rushed outside" said Hayaullah Khan, 20, a student at the school, with tea spilled over his traditional white shalwar kameez outfit.
Meanwhile, police stepped up patrols and vehicle checks for bombs and weapons in the capital, Islamabad, said Sultan Azam Temuri, a police official there. Temuri said that the Karachi blasts were "in our mind," but that there was no specific threat of an attack in Islamabad.
Karachi is Pakistan's main port city and commercial center, and is believed to be a hide-out for Islamic militants, some with suspected Al Qaeda links.
In recent months the city has been the scene of bomb explosions and attacks targeting security forces and Westerners, including an assassination attempt against a senior general in June. The general survived, but 10 other people died.
Much of the violence in the city of about 14 million people is blamed on Islamic hard-liners who are angered by Musharraf's decision to ally with the U.S.-led war campaign against terrorism.
On Saturday, a bomb killed two people outside a Karachi car dealership in part of the city where Pakistani police had arrested Al Qaeda operative Ramzi Binalshibh after a shootout in September 2002.
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