A security guard was injured in a grenade attack outside the Bahria Icon Tower in Karachi's Clifton area on Wednesday afternoon, police said.

South SSP Zubair Nazeer Shaikh said that two suspects riding a motorcycle lobbed a hand grenade at Icon Tower near Bin Qasim Park in Clifton. As a result, a security guard, 35-year-old Muneer Nazeer, was injured. Police called the bomb disposal squad to the scene who confirmed that it was a hand grenade, not a cracker as initially reported. The guard suffered minor injuries, Shaikh added.

The official said investigators were probing the possible motive for the attack.

However, the head of police's Counter-Terrorism Department, Omar Shahid Hamid, said the grenade attack may be linked to Bahria Town's "issues related to the Malir area". Elaborating, the CTD DIG said that several nationalist groups had recently launched a drive against Bahria Town Karachi (BTK) in Malir district and it was "most likely that the attack may be linked to it".

He pointed out that it was the same type of hand grenade that the banned Sindh Liberation Army had used in past terrorist attacks, while the manner of today's attack also appeared to be the same as that of the SRA.

Last month, an all-parties conference outside Karachi had declared BTK "illegal and unconstitutional" and "a modern form of colonisation", calling for the land to be returned to its original status.

The APC participants had alleged that "BTK's rogue elements under the patronisation of the Sindh government are destroying homes, villages, schools and graveyards like on [the] pattern of Israel in Palestine," adding that "it was destruction in [the] name of development."

They recalled that the Sindh government had given 43 dehs to the Malir Development Authority in 2013 and demanded that this notification be cancelled and the lands be restored to their original position.