KARACHI, Pakistan, Aug. 28 (UPI) -- Pakistan plans to deploy 11,000 troops in Karachi on Sept. 11 after intelligence agencies received reports al Qaida and Taliban may attack the country's largest city.
"We are taking strict security measures to prevent such attacks," Salahuddin Satti, director general Pakistan Rangers, told a briefing in Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital with a population of 12 million.
Satti told editors of major Pakistani newspapers that intelligence agencies had received "credible reports" that terrorists plan to cause "violence and chaos" on the first anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington.
He said the government will also deploy paramilitary troops outside diplomatic missions, residence of foreign, particularly Western, nationals, multinational companies and five-star hotels.
Sati said the provincial government had already brought 500 extra intelligence operatives to Karachi from other parts of the country to "keep an eye on those linked to the Taliban and al Qaida."
"We are also manning all exit and entry points and all major highways," he added.
Karachi is Pakistan's most violent city. Hundreds of people have been killed in ethnic clashes over the past five years. Pakistan says the Taliban trained the religious gangs behind the killings.
Pakistan's interior minister says the Taliban and al Qaida have retained their contacts with religious groups in Karachi after their defeat in Afghanistan last December.
He blamed the groups associated with al Qaida for kidnapping and killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi last January and for carrying out a car-bomb attack at the U.S. Consulate in June in which more than a dozen Pakistani passersby were killed.
