Karachi

KARACHI, Pakistan -- The most famous residence in Pakistan is the walled compound at 70 Clifton Road, the house of the Bhuttos, perhaps Pakistan's most famous and most troubled family.This was the home of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was prime minister until he was overthrown and hanged in 1979. And the home of his son Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed a few yards outside the entrance in a shootout last year with police. And the home of his daughter Benazir Bhutto, who spent months there under house arrest and then twice became prime minister.

The transcript of a secret military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, released by the Pentagon last week quoted Mohammed as claiming responsibility for planning 31 al-Qaida attacks and plots from the suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001 - which killed nearly 3,000 - to a 2002 shooting on an island off Kuwait that killed a U.S. Marine. Mohammed also said he beheaded Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan. ?I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z.? Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A police officer was killed and at least 26 people wounded yesterday when two car bombs detonated within 25 minutes and a dozen feet of each other in the southern port city of Karachi, police officials said. The explosions came days after six men accused of being part of a banned militant group were arrested in the city. And the location of the blasts, at the gate of an English-language training school, prompted officials to say that the attackers could have been lashing out at Pakistan's aligning with the United States to fight terrorism.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - At least four radical Islamic groups, including one believed responsible for the killing of an American journalist, appear to have formed an alliance to mount attacks and resist a government ban against them, Pakistani officials said yesterday. They said an attack by masked men on a police bus yesterday in Karachi, in which one officer was killed, was apparently a failed attempt by members of the alliance to free about 20 comrades who were being returned to jail from court and had been arrested as part of a widening government crackdown.

A Mighty Heart has the surface tension of a first-rate docudrama but neither the passion nor the vision to encompass its powerhouse subject, the kidnapping and execution of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. This Karachi, Pakistan-set drama begins to unfold after Sept. 11 and ends in early 2002. You can guess why the producers asked Michael Winterbottom to direct it. This versatile, dizzyingly erratic British filmmaker brought a riptide realism to In This World (2003), his potent, topical tragedy about the plight of Afghan refugees.

A federal grand jury in Greenbelt has indicted a Pakistani national who is accused of hacking into the computers used by the Washington office of a pro-Israeli group. Misbah Khan of Karachi is accused of hacking last year into the server in Silver Spring that is connected to the computers of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. The group's Web page was replaced with one boasting that the site had been "hacked by Doctor Nuker, Founder Pakistan Hackerz Club." The page also contained statements that attacked Israel and included links to anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian Web sites.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Ten people were killed and 10 others were wounded yesterday as a top Pakistani military general escaped an assassination attempt when gunmen ambushed his motorcade in Karachi, officials said. The intended target of the attack, Lt. Gen. Ahsan Salim Hayat, was unhurt. Six soldiers, three police officers and a pedestrian were killed, according to the military. For more than a month, a wave of violence and sectarian turmoil has gripped Pakistan, from the mountainous northern city of Gilgit to the sprawling southern port city of Karachi.

Dr. Kamal Mukhi, an anesthesiologist at the Prince George's Hospital Center in Cheverly, died Sunday at the Shock-Trauma Unit in Baltimore after being injured in an automobile accident Oct. 21.She was 48 and lived in Columbia, where her husband, Dr. Prakash Mukhi, is a dentist.Services for Dr. Mukhi were being held today at the Fleck funeral establishment in Laurel.A member of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, she also belonged to the American Medical Association and the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland.

THE KIDNAPPING and brutal murder of Daniel Pearl have shown Americans once again (not that any reminder was necessary) the barbarism and senseless violence that Islamic extremism breeds. Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was whisked into oblivion after agreeing to meet with a source in the Pakistani city of Karachi who had ties to an Islamic terrorist group. His abductors hustled him into a car in downtown Karachi, and he was never seen again. In the days that followed, the American public heard ridiculous conditions for Mr. Pearl's release, saw videotapes of him in shackles and handcuffs, and tried to sort through the shady world of Islamic thugs in Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The fate of kidnapped American journalist Daniel Pearl remained unclear yesterday amid conflicting claims. CNN reported late last night in Pakistan that it had received an e-mail purportedly sent by the kidnappers that said Pearl, a Wall Street Journal correspondent abducted 10 days ago in Karachi, had been killed. But also yesterday, a telephone caller to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi who claimed to represent Pearl's abductors demanded a $2 million ransom and set a 36-hour deadline for payment.