KARACHI — A bomb went off on a bus in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi on Saturday killing six people and wounding 48, police and a hospital official said. Pakistan's commercial capital and biggest city has seen numerous militant attacks over the past 10 years and is also plagued by violence between rival ethnic-based factions. The bus sustained serious damage in the explosion and a subsequent fire. While police said the bomb had been planted on the bus, provincial official Sharfud Din Memon said it was left on a motor-bike and went off as the bus passed. Eight of the wounded were in critical condition, said Seemi Jamali, a doctor at Jinnah Hospital. Meanwhile, authorities are investigating cough syrup believed to have killed 33 people in eastern Pakistan in the past three days, a government official said Saturday, the second time in recent months that suspect medicine is thought to have caused multiple deaths. The deaths from the cough syrup occurred in Gujranwala and villages surrounding the city, said Abdul Jabbar Shaheen, the top administrative official in Gujranwala. Another 54 people are being treated at hospitals in the city who are also believed to have consumed the syrup. Those involved are thought to be laborers or drug addicts who drank the syrup to get high, said Shaheen. Chemical samples collected from the victims' stomachs contained dextromethorphan, a synthetic morphine derivative used in cough syrup that can have mind-altering effects if consumed in large quantities, said Shaheen. It is being investigated whether the people affected by the syrup in Gujranwala drank too much of it, or whether there was a problem with the medicine itself, he said. Twenty-three people died in the nearby city of Lahore in November after drinking bad cough syrup sold under the brand name Tyno. They were also described at the time as people who consumed the drug to get high. Shaheen said the cough syrup involved in the incidents in and around Gujranwala was not sold under a single brand. He said there were some people in the city involved in the business of making cough syrup specifically to sell to drug addicts, and officials were trying to arrest the culprits. — Agencies
