IN A decrepit four-storey office block, Vu The Khanh runs what he describes as one of the busiest "embassies" in Hanoi.
State Department officials said that two of the largest and busiest American embassies, in South Africa and Nigeria, remained open.
"The U.S. Embassy has received evidence of a potential threat to American citizens and other Westerners in Pakistan from terrorists posing as street vendors or beggars on busy streets," the embassy warned U.S. citizens through its alert system.
The car bomb exploded about 10 30 a.m. on a busy street outside the embassy, which is in the central business district, leaving a crater nine feet deep near the embassy gate and blowing a wide hole in the metal fence, but leaving the four-story building largely intact.
"Right now we are busy with repairing the embassy and with our political work".
Eventually, the police erected heavy barriers on the busy street in front of the embassy, and assigned more policemen to patrol the area.
The embassy, located on a busy street in central Jakarta, has been equipped and reinforced with security barriers since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
As the dump trucks come and go, security concerns are also apparent at the American Embassy in Tashkent, where the chancery and the embassy annex are near busy roads and have limited physical security measures.
The embassy security team was indeed busy – watching the game.
The factory was busy producing all of the millwork for an embassy in Ghana.
The office was closed on Wednesday "simply on the basis that the staff would be busy with F.S.B. for the day," Mr. Barbour, the embassy spokesman, said.
