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Two Killed, Dozen Injured in Karachi Cinema Blast
KARACHI, July 1 (News Agencies) - A bomb exploded in a movie theatre in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi Sunday killing one person and injuring a dozen others, while violence on the eve of local polls claimed one more life, police said.
The bomb was planted in the Prince Cinema on the main M.A.Jinnah Road and went off soon after the start of the film being screened, senior police officer Atta-ur-Rehman said.
At least 14 cinemagoers were injured in the blast. One died on the way to hospital and the condition of at least two others was reported to be serious, officials said.
Cinema owner Akbar Naqvi said the bomb was planted under a seat in the gallery which was still partly empty. It damaged the furniture and one of the walls.
"The cinema has the capacity of 1,200 people but only one-third of the seats were occupied at the time of the blast," Naqvi said.
Witnesses said smoke filled the gallery and people, including screaming women and children, ran out of the theatre in panic.
"The bomb exploded with a big bang and soon we saw many people fall from their seats," said Imtiaz Shah, who had came to watch historical Punjabi language film "Nizam Lohar."
The blast occurred amid tight security in the city on the eve of local government elections in some districts of the southern Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital.
The city's powerful ethnic-based party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has boycotted the municipal polls. Critical of demarcation of the constituencies for local council, it has asked voters to stay indoors on the polling day, Monday.
"This is an act of terrorism aimed to disrupt Monday's elections," city police chief Tariq Jamil told AFP. However, he added it was premature to blame any one group.
Jamil said police had arrested a "terrorist" on Friday and had recovered explosives from him, "which may provide some clue to Sunday's blast".
Violence was also reported in the eastern neighbourhood of Gulshan-i-Iqbal where unidentified people set a passenger bus on fire, police said.
Six people were injured in shooting by unidentified men in central Nazimabad area and one of them died later, hospital officials said.
Six others, five of them women, were injured elsewhere in the city when unknown people threw a firecracker at them, police said.
In other parts of the country's commercial hub, people fired in the air to force shopkeepers to pull down their shutters, witnesses said.
"We are confident that there would be a very low turnout on Monday," MQM deputy chief Nasreen Jalil said.
However, she denied her party's involvement in the bomb blast.
"We condemned the blast, which has exposed the government's claim of providing security to the people," she said.
Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider on Saturday said some 45,000 army and paramilitary troops and police squads would be on the streets in Sindh to prevent any violence on the polling day.
Karachi has a history of political, ethnic and sectarian violence in which more than 4,000 people have died in the past five years.
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