Bomb Kills 4, Including 3 Children, in Pakistani Port

At least four people, were killed, three of them children, and five wounded Saturday in a bomb blast in Pakistan’s troubled port city of Karachi, ambulance and hospital sources said.

Police said the explosion occurred in front of a house in the congested Sherabad district and killed three children, ages 7, 8 and 12. The fourth victim remained unidentified.

Five people, including two women, were reportedly wounded.

“It was a bomb blast. That’s all we know at present,” a police officer said.

An official of the private Edhi ambulance service said ambulance volunteers had reported that something was thrown in front of a house where children were playing.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, and there was no word on the motive behind it.

More than 120 people have been killed in ethnic, political and sectarian violence in Karachi this year, compared with 500 in 1996 and more than 2,000 in 1995.

Also Saturday, lightning split a boulder in half in the mountains of northwestern Pakistan, sending it crashing into a village below and killing 24 people.

Several of the victims were crushed or buried alive when the boulder smashed three houses in the Mansera district, 50 miles north of the capital, Islamabad, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported.