Killing of French nationals suggests militants are back

A suspected suicide bomber killed twelve French and at least two Pakistani nationals in the southern port city of Karachi on Wednesday in a grisly reminder that President General Musharraf's war against terrorism has not been won. The Pakistani Human Rights Commission (HRC) condemned the attack and said it showed that government measures to halt extremism had failed. "Unless a genuine commitment is shown to tackling militancy, rather than making merely cosmetic gestures under international pressure .....violence will continue to grow," HRC said in a statement. The bomb exploded beside a bus in which the French nationals were travelling, police officials told IRIN from Karachi. Apart from destroying the suspected car driven by the suicide bomber, it ripped apart the bus belonging to the Pakistani Navy, and also shattered windows in nearby hotels and shops. Most of the casualties were inside the bus. Hospital officials told IRIN that apart from the dead, at least 10 Pakistanis and another nine French nationals were wounded in the blast. The Frenchmen were working on a submarine project for the Pakistani navy. A prominent human rights activist and lawyer, Hina Jilani, told IRIN that the recent spate of such incidents demonstrated that either the government was not serious about controlling religious militants or was simply unable to do anything. "We are all frightened now," she said, adding that it was not just foreigners who were being killed in extremist violence but a large number of Pakistanis had also been targeted. "If the government is not genuine in curbing Islamic extremism, it will spell a very bad period for Pakistan," she warned. Pakistani and US authorities are reportedly working together in hunting down Al-Qaeda members in the tribal rim bordering Afghanistan. Several Islamic groups have warned of unspecified consequences if US troops are not withdrawn from the area. "This is a retaliation to whatsoever is going on," a senior Pakistani official told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. He said the latest bombing appeared to be linked to an attack on a church in Islamabad in March, in which five people were killed, including the wife and a daughter of an American diplomat. The church, mostly used by foreigners, is in a high-security zone of the capital. The official, who asked not to be named, said the bombing may have been carried out in protest against a crackdown ordered by President Pervez Musharraf as part of the US-led war on terrorism. News agencies reported that members of the touring New Zealand cricket team, who were staying at a hotel across the street from where the bombing took place, were safe, but had been told to come home. The volatile city of 14 million people has a history of ethnic and religious violence in which thousands of people have been killed since 1982. It was in Karachi that Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped earlier this year and later killed. Security concerns and threats have compelled the government to transfer a case against his alleged abductors to another city.