American Defense Secretary could fell victim to Al-Qaeda terrorists

Another act of terrorism took place in the Pakistani city of Karachi. A suicidal terrorist crashed the car that he was driving, running into the fence around the American Consulate office. The accident was followed with a blast. Eight people were reportedly killed and 20 were wounded.

The capacity of the explosion was very considerable, some of those people that were killed still cannot be identified. Needless to mention that American Consulate office and the buildings nearby were seriously damaged.

Acts of terrorism in Pakistan against foreign citizens have already become a tradition. Eleven French nationals and three Pakistanis were killed in May as a result of another explosion not far from Sheraton hotel in Karachi. No one has been punished for that attack, but the Pakistani police believe that Al-Qaeda was involved in that act of terrorism.

It seems that Bin Laden’s organization can be behind today’s act of terrorism too. Bin Laden is still elusive, it is considered that the prime suspect is somewhere on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and it seems that he is rather safe there. There is nothing surprising about it – Bin Laden has a lot of followers in Pakistan amid local Muslim organizations, taking into consideration the fact that local Pashtoon tribes support him too.

However, the act of terror could be organized by local Pakistani radicals, the moment of the attack had some hidden motive as well: US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Pakistan on Thursday. Isn’t this a reason for terrorists to show their power?

However that may be, the explosion near the American Consulate in Karachi was another blow on the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Terrorists proved that again that Musharraf could not control radicals. The explosion surely damaged the settlement of the conflict between India and Pakistan too: if Islamabad could not cope with terrorists within the country, then what can be said about Kashmir?

BBC photo

Vasily Bubnov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov