KARACHI, June 10: At least 11 people were killed and 12 others injured when a convoy of the Corps Commander of Karachi was ambushed near the Clifton Bridge on Thursday morning. The attack was followed by a bomb blast.

Lt-Gen Ahsan Saleem Hayat and his convoy came under heavy fire as they approached the bridge on their way to the corps headquarters. A senior official of the ISPR said that the corps commander was the target of the attack.

"The Corps Commander remained safe during the ambush," spokesman for the ISPR, Karachi, Lt-Col Idrees, told Dawn. Seven of those killed were soldiers, three were policemen and one a passerby.

However, according to Col Idrees, six soldiers were killed and two others wounded. "The wounded were admitted to hospital and their condition is serious." He said he could not give the names of the soldiers killed and injured.

The attack took place in an area only recently declared "a very high security zone" by the Sindh police chief. Intelligence sources identified the seven soldiers who were killed as Mohammad Shahid, Tariq Naveed, Mohammad Beg, Gulzar Mansoor, Mohabbat Khan, Mohammad Arif and Afzal Shakir.

The three policemen who were killed are: SI Hasan Asghar, HC Nazeer Hussain and PC Liaquat Gujjar. The passerby was identified as Ashok, a sweeper. It could not be ascertained if the policemen died from the direct shots fired by the assailants who had attacked the convoy or they were caught in the ensuing crossfire.

The injured were identified as Karim Bux, Amjad Ali, Mohammad Afzal, Abida Hussain and Mohammad Saleem Memon. Seven others people suffered minor injuries. "No-one has claimed responsibility so far," city police chief Tariq Jamil said, adding that police had found the vehicle used by the assailants abandoned near the Defence View.

"We have started search for the attackers around the area where we found the vehicle," he said. The police official said that some empties of Kalashnikov and G-3 rifles had been found in the abandoned vehicle, Toyota Hi-Ace (JE-9255), besides blood stains.

The vehicle had been snatched at gunpoint early in the morning from Gulshan-i-Iqbal. Police officials said that there were more than eight attackers who had taken position in a vacant plot adjacent to the Clifton Bridge.

As the army convoy, coming from Clifton, was approaching the bridge, it came under heavy fire. The convoy consisted of the car of the corps commander and two vehicles with guards.

The assailants first fired at the car of the corps commander and the rear vehicle in which six soldiers were killed. The driver of the corps commander died in hospital.

The officials said that law-enforcement personnel reached the place where they found a suspicious bag. As they threw the bag into a nearby vacant plot, it exploded, causing damage to a portion of the boundary wall of the plot.

"Our soldiers, who are well-trained, returned the fire. We inspected the spot and saw blood stains on the ground from where the attack was carried, which indicated that the assailants must have been wounded badly," the ISPR spokesman said.

He said that a fertilizer bag was found at a corner of the bridge, and when it was opened, a grey shopper was found in it. The shopper contained crystal-like chemical, time device, detonator, two battery cells and a mobile phone, which was connected to the bomb. It was later defused, he added.

Identical press statements issued by the ISPR, Sindh police and the information department said: "Commander 5 Corps, Lieutenant General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, today at about 9:00am came under fire shots off Clifton Bridge on Abdullah Haroon Road.

"The Corps Commander remained safe during the ambush; however, a vehicle carrying the guards came under fire. A bus carrying employees of Sindh Secretariat, two police motorcycles and a passerby were also hit.

The escort returned fire. In this incident, 10 persons were killed and 10 injured. Of injured, two are hospitalized." Immediately after the area had been cordoned off, a bomb was found which was removed from the place but exploded in a few minutes. No damage was caused by the explosion.

Shortly afterwards, while the area was being cleared, agencies personnel found a high-intensity bomb next to the Clifton Bridge. It was successfully defused. Had it not been done, a major disaster would have occurred as the area is densely populated.

The Sindh government announced a reward of Rs2 million for information leading to arrest of the culprits involved in the attack, the press statement said. In the month of May, two suicide bomb attacks claimed 47 lives, besides the targeted killing of a religious scholar and bomb blasts at the PACC and KPT which killed four people.