ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Police arrested two suspected Al Qaeda-linked militants accused of orchestrating a suicide attack near the U.S. Consulate in Karachi that killed a U.S. diplomat and three Pakistanis, a senior police official said Monday.
Anwarul Haq, 30, and Usman Ghani, 28, were captured in a raid in Karachi on Monday, said Jehangir Mirza, police chief for the Sindh province of which Karachi is the capital.
During interrogation the suspects confessed to "preparing" a suicide bomber who slammed his explosive-laden vehicle into U.S. diplomat David Foy's car near the consulate on March 2, Mirza said.
"The terrorists we arrested today have links with Al Qaeda," he said without offering evidence.
The attack, which wounded about 50 other people and was claimed by Al Qaeda, happened a day before U.S. President George W. Bush's made an official visit to Pakistan.
Over the weekend, a Pakistani security official said six men had been detained in connection with the bombing and that the suicide bomber name was Raja Tahir, a militant from the outlawed Pakistani group Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Mirza confirmed that Tahir was the bomber, but denied the arrests of six men last week. "We arrested two terrorists today, and police are looking for some of their associates," he said.
Karachi has been the scene of several terrorist attacks targeting Westerners since Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf made this Islamic nation a key ally of the United States in its war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
A car bombing killed 14 people outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi in June 2002.
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