(05-07) 21:17 PDT KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) --
A powerful bomb destroyed a shuttle bus in Karachi, Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 10 Europeans, police said. Another 25 people were injured, some of them seriously.
The 45-seat bus was parked outside the Sheraton Hotel when the bomb went off, tearing a large crater in the road.
Hotel workers first told police that the bus was taking German visitors to the Karachi seaport. But the German consulate and foreign ministry said they were unaware of any German deaths.
No Americans were believed to be involved, said Karachi Police Inspector Sayed Kamal Shah.
"We are still trying to identify the nationalities. They were all foreigners," Shah said. "There may also have been French nationals as well."
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing.
The explosion destroyed several vehicles in the area, and Shah said it was possible a second vehicle may have been involved in the blast. Police on the scene have not been able to reconstruct the incident with complete accuracy, he said.
Initially police said the bus had returned to the hotel from the Karachi airport. But later they said the bus was bound for the seaport and had been parked on the street waiting for a tardy passenger when the bomb exploded.
"The sound was so loud I think you could have heard it from 10 kilometers (six miles) away," said Munir Sheikh, a police officer who was standing nearby.
Ambulances struggled to reach the scene through the congested early morning traffic.
"I took some of the bodies to the hospital. The condition was very bad. It was horrible," said Mohammed Rizwan, an ambulance driver.
Westerners in Pakistan have been warned to use caution because of threats from militant Islamic groups angry about President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's support for the U.S.-led coalition's war in neighboring Afghanistan.
The radical groups were strong supporters of the Taliban regime, which collapsed under the coalition's assault.
Musharraf banned five extremist Muslim groups in January. Two months later, grenade-throwing terrorists killed five worshippers in an Islamabad church attended by foreigners. Two of the dead were Americans.
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in southern Karachi in January and killed by radical Islamists protesting the detention of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Four men accused of the killing are on trial in the Sindh city of Hyderabad, 60 miles north of Karachi. 