A suicide bomber detonated a truck packed with explosives at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Saturday, killing at least 60 people in a brazen attack in the heart of the Pakistan capital.The attack happened at approximately 8pm local time
Over 200 people were wounded, some critically, and there were fears more dead would be found in the fiery wreckage of the 290-room hotel, a popular gathering place for politicians, foreigners and the Pakistan elite.
The blast brought down the ceiling in a banquet room where more than 300 people were breaking their Ramadan fast.
Officials said they were worried the building, engulfed in flame after the blast ruptured a gas pipeline, would collapse. A security official said many people leapt to their deaths from upper floors rather than be burnt alive.
The bombing came shortly after new President Asif Ali Zardari, who faces a struggle to rein in Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, delivered his inaugural address to parliament only a few hundred metres away.
It was one of the deadliest attacks in an increasingly bloody campaign by militants in Pakistan, a vital ally in the US-led “war on terror”, and presented Zardari with a major challenge just days after he took office.
“The government will continue to fight terrorism and extremism in all its forms and manifestations,” he said in a statement. “Such dastardly acts cannot dent the government’s commitment to fight this menace.”
The attack appeared to be timed to cause the maximum number of casualties, coming as the hotel was thronged with families holding their evening meal to break the daily Ramadan fast.
Eyewitness Mohammad Jamil said the truck exploded just outside the hotel’s gates. He said the force of the blast sent the truck sailing into the air, and knocked him over onto the street.
“For a few seconds I was in shock and did not know what had happened. Then I remembered the deafening noise,” Jalil said.
The blast, so powerful it was heard for miles, blew an enormous crater in the ground and destroyed the outside wall of the compound. Buildings several kilometres away had windows blown out from the impact.
Before officials pushed back the media over fears the devastated structure would collapse, a photographer from newswire AFP saw mutilated bodies amid the carnage.
Another witness, Dirome Anthony, told the BBC that there was a moment of quiet after the blast before debris started falling from the sky. He said a human hand landed near his car.
“It was like hell,” he said.
The government ordered in the army to try to clear away the debris. Officials said many people may have been trapped once the fire tore through several floors of the hotel.
“The death toll is 60 and it may go up,” said a senior security official who declined to be named.
Hospital officials said a US national was among the dead. The security official said women, children and an unknown number of foreigners had died.
The government had received word two days ago of a possible attack near the parliamentary offices, interior ministry official Rehman Malik said.
IntelCenter, a US organisation that tracks militants, said an Al-Qaeda leader who claimed responsibility for a previous bombing in Pakistan threatened new attacks in a video this month to mark the anniversary of Sept. 11.
The Marriott was attacked previously in 2004 and 2007. But while nearly 1,300 people have been killed this year alone in a wave of militant violence across Pakistan, attacks in Islamabad have been relatively rare.
But as Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants have tried to establish a safe-haven in the tribal areas, attacks have spread to the capital more often.
“This is a reminder of the threat we all face. The United States will stand with Pakistan’s democratically elected government as they confront this challenge,” said US national security council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
In Britain, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the “disgraceful” bombing had strengthened the resolve to fight militancy.
Although a close anti-terror US ally since 9/11, critics have repeatedly insisted that elements of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence service give clandestine backing to Islamist militants.
Zardari will meet US President George W. Bush in the United States next week for the first time since he took the oath of office on Sept. 9.
The Bush administration has accused Taliban Islamic militants and Al-Qaeda followers of using the unruly border areas as bases from which to direct a growing deadly insurgency in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Meanwhile strains have emerged between Islamabad and Washington over strikes by US forces on Pakistani tribal areas, carried out by US forces operating in Afghanistan.
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