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| India-Pakistan |
| US closes embassy, consulates in Pakistan |
| 2002-06-14 |
| The United States on Friday shuttered its diplomatic missions in Pakistan as well as the American Centre in Islamabad after a deadly truck bomb attack outside its consulate in Karachi, the State Department said. The embassy and American Centers were closed to the public immediately after the blast, as were the consulates in Lahore and Peshawar, Lynn Cassel, a department spokeswoman, told AFP. The bombing--which damaged the Karachi consulate and killed eight people, none of them US government employees--slightly wounded a US Marine guard and five local Pakistani employees at the mission, she said. "In addition, we believe that two or more contract consulate guards were critically injured," Cassel said, calling the explosion the result of an "enormous truck bomb" that went off just 15 metres from the southeast corner of the consulate. Can we indulge a little fantasy of pulling out all our diplomats, sending all the Pak diplomats home, breaking all commercial contacts with the country, to include telecommunications, and telling them to call us when they've got their house in order? |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |