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Bomb at Pakistan hotel kills at least 11
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-10 07:32 PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Suicide attackers shot their way past guards and set off a massive blast Tuesday outside a luxury hotel where foreigners and well-to-do Pakistanis mixed, killing at least 11 people and wounding 70, officials said. The bombers struck the Pearl Continental Hotel at about 10 pm, when nightlife was still in swing. The attack reduced a section of the hotel to concrete rubble and twisted steel and left a huge crater in a parking lot.
Earlier in the day, officials said Pakistan's military engaged militants on two fronts elsewhere in the northwest. The army dispatched helicopter gunships in support of citizens fighting the Taliban in one district and used artillery fire against militants in another after sympathetic tribal elders refused to hand them over. Neither operation was anywhere near the size of the military's offensive in the Swat Valley, where 15,000 troops have battled up to 7,000 Taliban fighters. But the battles Monday and Tuesday in the Upper Dir and Bannu districts suggest that pockets of pro-Taliban sentiment remain strong in some areas, while the militants' form of hardline Islam is unpalatable in others — particularly because of the violence the militants have used to enforce it. Peshawar lies in between the two districts. The Pearl Continental, affectionately called the "PC" by Pakistanis, overlooks a golf course and a historic fort. The ritziest hotel in the city, it is relatively well-guarded and set far back from the main road.
Three men in a pickup truck approached the hotel's main gate, opened fire at security guards, drove inside and detonated the bomb close to the building, Ali said. A senior police officer, Shafqatullah Malik, estimated it contained more than half a ton of explosives. The chaotic scene echoed a bombing last year at Islamabad's Marriott Hotel that killed more than 50 people. Both hotels were favored places for foreigners and elite Pakistanis to stay and socialize, making them high-profile targets for militants despite tight security. The method of attack also matched a May 27 assault on buildings belonging to police and a regional headquarters of Pakistan's top intelligence agency in the eastern city of Lahore, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility. A small group opened fire on security guards to get through a guard post, then detonated an explosive-laden van. |
