ISLAMABAD, May 9: The police have rounded up more than 100 people from extremist groups with suspected links to the Taliban and Al Qaeda after a suicide bombing which killed 11 French nationals, sources said.

“More than 100 suspects have been detained in the countrywide crackdown on extremist elements,” a source in the interior ministry told AFP.

“It is an ongoing operation. The majority of these people belong to sectarian and jihadi parties who are suspected of having links with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.”

The source said the operation was launched on the direct instructions of President Pervez Musharraf in response to the car bombing outside the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi on Wednesday.

Three Pakistanis were also killed when an unidentified man rammed a car loaded with explosives into a bus carrying the French naval workers as they prepared to leave the hotel for work.

The French citizens were part of a Franco-Pakistani joint project to build three submarines at the southern port city.

Musharraf called it an attack on Pakistan’s national interests as well as on France, and vowed to uproot the terrorist networks in Pakistan.—AFP