U.S. To Reopen Consulate In Karachi

The U.S. Consulate in Karachi will reopen Tuesday with "enhanced security," just four days after it was targeted in a deadly car bombing that killed 12 people and injured about 50, a consulate official said.

"Tomorrow, our full American and Pakistani staff will be back at work and the consulate will begin resuming normal operations. But in the near future, the U.S. Consulate building will only be open to American citizens," said the official, who declined to be identified.

U.S. officials have "enhanced security at the consulate," though he did not elaborate.

The compound was already heavily guarded before Friday's attack, which some believe helped prevent more casualties. Tight security measures included concrete barriers around a 10-foot concrete wall and blocked off sidewalks in front of the consulate. Barricades shunted traffic away from lanes adjacent to the building.

Over the weekend, FBI agents joined Pakistani investigators in videotaping and photographing the area to reconstruct Friday's massive blast, which blew out a section of the consulate perimeter wall and left 11 people dead. A police constable became the 12th victim after dying Sunday of injuries suffered in the attack.

No Americans were killed in the attack but one U.S. Marine guard and five Pakistani consulate employees received minor injuries.

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad as well as its consulates in Lahore and Peshawar reopened for business Monday, after being shut down after the Friday attack.

On Sunday, the previously unknown "al-Qanoon," or "The Law" group, which has claimed responsibility for the Friday attack, faxed a message to Pakistani newspaper Ummat calling on President Pervez Musharraf to resign. The group threatened more attacks.

Police said they are taking al-Qanoon seriously. U.S. officials in Washington say they suspect al Qaeda or affiliated Islamic extremist groups carried out the attack, but have no direct evidence. Several Pakistani groups in Karachi have ties to Osama bin Laden's terror network and are angry that Musharraf sided with the United States in the war against terror.

Police have questioned three people so far, though no one has been taken into custody, said investigator Manzoor Mughal. The witnesses include a religious school student, a security guard, and a mechanic at a car repair shop, he said.

The student, identified as Riaz Uddin, was walking near the area when he was injured in the blast. Interviewed in the hospital, he told police he was a student at the Jamia Faruqia madrassa, an Islamic school.

Private security guard Sharif Ajnabi was in the park across the street from the consulate when the bomb went off.

The mechanic, who was not identified, works at a car shop owned by one of the victims of the blast, Syed Shafat Husain. Husain and his niece, Aliyah Warsi, a physician from Kenya, were killed as they left the nearby Marriott Hotel after booking facilities for her scheduled marriage to a Pakistani man.

The explosion blew a gaping hole in the heavily guarded consulate's perimeter wall, damaged or destroyed 18 cars, shattered windows a block away and sent debris flying half a mile. The devastation made it difficult to piece together events leading up to the bombing.

Officials first said they thought a suicide bomber was responsible. But attention has shifted to a driver's training school car that was carrying an instructor and three female students. Police said the bomb may have been stashed in the vehicle by someone who knew it would pass by the consulate and who detonated the explosives by radio from nearby.

The attack — the fourth against foreigners in Pakistan since January — also prompted the U.S. government to consider scaling back diplomatic staff in a country on the front line of the war against al Qaeda.

Violence against foreigners in Pakistan has increased since Musharraf threw his support behind the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

A May 8 suicide bombing killed 11 French engineers and three other people in Karachi, a port city of 14 million that is plagued by violence.

Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was abducted and slain in Karachi in January while working on a story about Islamic militants. Four Islamic militants are on trial in that case.

On March 17, a suicide attacker lobbed grenades inside a church in diplomatic enclave of Islamabad. He was killed along with four others, including two Americans — a U.S. Embassy employee and her teen-age daughter.