KARACHI, July 20: A government official survived a bomb attack on his vehicle on a busy road here on Saturday that left his police guard dead hardly an hour before another bomb went off in a house due to ‘mishandling’ by suspected terrorists in another area, killing two of them.

According to police, the vehicle of Matanat Ali Khan, Karachi’s metropolitan commissioner, was attacked near Essa Nagri after he left his office at Civic Centre for home almost an hour before sunset. Initially the police described the incident as a grenade attack, but the impact of the explosion forced them to change their opinion.

“The attack was carried out through a bomb planted in a motorcycle parked along Sir Shah Mohammad Suleman Road,” said SP Muqaddas Raza. “Most probably a remote control device was used to detonate the bomb.”

The explosion was so powerful that it destroyed the double-cabin vehicle of Mr Khan and three stationary motorcycles, damaged two rickshaws and smashed windowpanes of several flats.

Other than Mr Khan, the blast left three other people injured. They were taken to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital and Aga Khan Hospital. They included his guard, constable Sohail Anjum Siddiqi, who suffered head injuries and died in hospital, an official said.

While police were busy collecting evidence from the scene, another explosion inside a flat in Patel Para left two people dead and as many injured. Police said the blast occurred on the third floor of a three-storey building, which was rented out only four days ago.

“The three-storey structure has been built on a 60-yard plot in a narrow street,” said SP Raja Umer Khattab of the CID’s counter-terrorism unit. “It seems that the blast occurred when explosive material also containing ball bearings was mishandled by the people in the flat.

Another police officer said that four men were in the flat when it was hit by the blast. Two died on the spot and two were injured and taken to the Civil Hospital.

“One of the injured has been taken into custody,” he said. “The other is in a critical condition and going through surgery.

The bodies could not be identified as one of them has almost been torn into pieces and the other has been mutilated.