Pakistani police on Tuesday arrested some 100 people over a suicide bomb attack at a newspaper office amid mounting public anger at ethnic and sectarian violence which has claimed thousands of lives here.
Police said they launched a major sweep of the city within hours of the blast Monday at the Nawa-i-Waqat media group's building.
"We have arrested around 100 suspects in connection with the blast in the newspaper office in an overnight raid," Karachi police chief Tariq Jamil said.
An unidentified woman believed to be a suicide bomber was among the three dead after the huge explosion inside the advertising department of the building.
An editor of The Nation, Nawa-i-Waqat's English-language daily, said the news group had received threats, which had not been taken seriously by the police authorities.
He also made veiled accusations against the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a political party representing Indian immigrants which has been blamed for terrorist attacks in the past.
The MQM has denied involvement in Monday's blast and the city's police chief refused to disclose whether those rounded up overnight had any political affiliations.
"All of them have criminal records and we are investigating Monday's incident," he said.
"One person who could have identified (the suicide bomber) died in the attack while the other injured people are not in conditions to give the exact description of the woman, who was blown to pieces."
Extra police had been deployed outside newspaper offices Tuesday, he said.
At least 75 people have died and 350 have been injured in some 35 bomb explosions in Pakistan this year, mostly in central Punjab province.
The government usually blames intelligence agents from rival India, but most of the attacks remain unsolved.
More than 4,000 people have died in Karachi, the capital of Sindh province and Pakistan's main financial center, in ethnic, political and sectarian violence in the past four years -- KARACHI (AFP)
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