Attack on a Pakistani Military Convoy Kills 11 in Karachi

Gunmen killed a bystander and 10 members of Pakistan’s security forces -- seven soldiers and three police officers -- Thursday when they ambushed a military convoy in an upscale district of this volatile port city.

The apparent target of the attack, Lt. Gen. Ahsan Saleem Hayat, commander of the Pakistani army’s 5th Corps, suffered some injuries, according to reports quoting witnesses.

But military officials said Hayat was unharmed and was not in his car when militants ambushed his convoy.

“He is safe, and he is in his office,” said the Pakistani military’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan.

The timing and the apparent targeting of Hayat suggested that the attack might have been in retaliation for a military operation Wednesday that killed at least 20 suspected fighters of the Al Qaeda terrorist network and their supporters. The offensive occurred in South Waziristan, a region bordering Afghanistan that is considered a possible hide-out for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Nek Mohammed, a 27-year-old tribesman accused of sheltering foreign militants, warned after Wednesday’s army assault that “if the government does not halt its operations, there will be attacks in Peshawar, Islamabad and Karachi.”

The ambush in Karachi occurred Thursday morning when Hayat’s convoy approached a bridge near the U.S. Consulate. Attackers opened fire from two directions, according to reports.

Hayat’s security escort returned fire. The intense gun battle shattered nearby windows in the Clifton district, home to some of Karachi’s wealthiest residents.

According to sources who spoke on condition they not be identified, the corps commander’s vehicle was heavily damaged in the ambush.

After the attack, authorities said they found Kalashnikov assault rifles and explosives inside the attackers’ bullet-riddled vehicle, which was abandoned in an upscale neighborhood.

Authorities did not name any suspects, and there were no reports late Thursday that security forces had detained anyone.

Karachi Mayor Naimatullah Khan called the ambush a terrorist attack. It was the latest episode in a surge of violence that has shaken this southern city in the last month.

The attack was so bold, and apparently well coordinated, that some here suspected that enemies from within Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s own security forces might have been involved.

In May, Musharraf told a local TV interviewer that junior army and air force personnel had been involved in planting a bomb in December that exploded under a bridge just after the president’s motorcade passed the area. No one died in the attack just outside Islamabad, the capital.

That assassination attempt was followed 11 days later by another attack in which two suicide bombers rammed their minivans into Musharraf’s motorcade. Sixteen people, most of them police officers assigned to guard the president, died in the explosions. Musharraf blamed the Al Qaeda terrorist network for the second attack.

Musharraf was the target of at least one other assassination attempt -- in April 2002, when a militant tried to set off a bomb in a parked truck by dialing his cellphone as the president’s motorcade passed. The bomb did not explode, apparently because a jamming device blocked the signal. A similar device helped Musharraf escape the bridge bombing in December.

Karachi has recently suffered devastating attacks. In May, two car bombs exploded near the home of the U.S. consul general and the Pakistani-American Cultural Center, killing a police officer and wounding 34 people.

Also last month, more than 60 people were killed in attacks on Shiite Muslim mosques and in riots that followed the killing of a leading pro-Taliban Sunni Muslim cleric.

Special correspondent Ur-Rahman reported from Karachi and Times staff writer Watson from New Delhi.