Ambush kills three policemen in Karachi: officials

KARACHI: Gunmen ambushed police in Karachi late Friday, sparking gunbattles in which three officers were killed and more than 30 others wounded, officials said.

The police commandos, dressed in plain clothes, were targeted in the eastern neighbourhood of Korangi, which has been immune from the political and ethnically linked violence.

"These policemen were in a van going on a raid on a tip-off when they were intercepted by armed men who started firing, injuring many policemen," senior police official Shaukat Hussain told AFP.

"The police returned fire and at least one attacker has been killed."

Television footage of the aftermath of the attack showed injured policemen being carried by their comrades and local residents into ambulances and private vehicles heading to hospital.

"Our hospital has received 32 injured policemen, four of whom are critically injured. They all have gunshot wounds," said Seemin Jamali, spokeswoman for the Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Centre.

She confirmed that the bodies of at least three policemen had been brought in after the attack. Hussain also confirmed the same toll.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011