Blasts kill at least 8 at Pakistani shrine

Two suicide bombers blew themselves up inside the crowded shrine compound in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi today, killing…

Two suicide bombers blew themselves up inside the crowded shrine compound in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi today, killing at least eight people and injuring 50, police said.

Police and ambulance services rushed to the scene.

The US-backed Pakistani government is battling Taliban insurgents who remain effective despite military crackdowns on their strongholds in the northwest near the Afghan border.

The Pakistani army has been stretched because of its relief efforts during and after summer floods.

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Pakistan today kept shut the main border crossing used to supply Nato troops in Afghanistan a day after the US apologised for killing three Pakistani soldiers in the air strike that triggered the transit point's closure.

At least 2,500 trucks are backed up waiting for permission to enter Afghanistan, Khawaja Muhammad Khan, president of the nationwide truckers body, said by phone from Peshawar, the main city in Pakistan's northwest.

Khan Pasand Khan, a government official in Khyber Agency, confirmed there had been no order to allow trucks and fuel tankers, dozens of which were set ablaze by militants in the past week, to cross the Torkham border post.

Pakistan closed the Khyber Pass route into Afghanistan after the September 30th attack by US helicopters, which the American ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson yesterday called a "terrible accident."

Taliban rebels claimed responsibility for recent strikes on tankers parked along the route to Torkham, through which flow most of the 580 truckloads per day of supplies and fuel contracted by Nato.

Rebels yesterday launched the fourth major assault on supply lines for 142,000 NaTO troops fighting the Afghan Taliban since the border point was closed.

Agencies