8 killed by car bomb in Pakistan's Karachi

Eight people including six police officers were killed and several more wounded Monday in a car bomb attack targeting a senior policeman in Pakistan's financial capital Karachi, officials said. Senior Superintendent Aslam Khan, who was unhurt but whose home was destroyed, told AFP he had been threatened by the Pakistani Taliban -- which is allied to Al-Qaeda -- and that he was the target of the attack. "It was a car bomb attack on my house," he said. "I was receiving threats from Tehreek-e-Taliban. Taliban are involved in this attack." Khan heads the counter-terrorism unit of the Police Crime Investigation Department in Karachi, investigating Islamist militant cells in the city. Several neighbouring houses were also wrecked in the attack, private Pakistan TV channels showed, with four cars being badly damaged and a two-metre (six feet) deep crater left in front of Khan's home.  "Eight people including six policemen have been killed and several others were wounded. It was a car bomb attack," Shoukat Hussain, another senior police officer told AFP. "A child and a woman were also killed." "We are investigating whether a suicide bomber was riding the car or someone parked it outside the house," Hussain added. Simi Jamal, a senior doctor at Karachi's main Jinnah hospital, told AFP: "We have received three dead bodies." There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing. Nearly 4,700 people have been killed across Pakistan in attacks blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked networks based in the country's northwestern tribal belt since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad in 2007. On Thursday, a bomber killed 46 people when he blew himself up in a crowd of mourners as they gathered for prayers in the northwestern town of Jandol, 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the once Taliban-infested Swat Valley. Karachi, Pakistan's economic hub, is currently undergoing its worst ethnic- and politically-linked unrest in 16 years, with more than 100 people killed in one week alone last month. The gang wars have been linked to ethnic tensions between the Mohajirs, the Urdu-speaking majority represented by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and Pashtun migrants affiliated to the rival Awami National Party (ANP). The nationally ruling Pakistan People's Party, which was elected in 2008 after nine years of military rule, insists that civilian authorities are capable of controlling the bloodshed, despite calls for military intervention.