At the time of recording this tentative assessment (2 PM Indian Standard Time on May 8, 2002), theonly details available about an explosion at Karachi on the morning of May 8, 2002, were as follows: Twelvepersons, nine of them French, and the remaining Pakistanis were killed when an explosion destroyed a bus ofthe Pakistani Navy outside the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi. Twenty-five others were injured, many of themFrench. All of them were working in a production facility of the Pakistan Navy near Karachi where theFrench company producing the Agosta class submarines was assembling a submarine out of parts imported fromFrance and training Pakistani Navy personnel in the assembly and ultimate indigenous production of submarinesout of technology bought by Pakistan from the French company. The bus was to transport the French personnel tothe work site as it was doing every day. According to the Karachi Police, the explosion would appear tohave been caused by a suicide bomber sitting inside a car. No organisation has claimedresponsibility.