Rescuers pulled 18 bodies from the rubble of a luxury hotel in northwest Pakistan hit by a suicide car bomb, as blame fell yesterday on Taliban rebels avenging a military push.
Two UN employees were among the dead and more aid workers were wounded in the massive blast that devastated the Pearl Continental in Peshawar late on Tuesday, in what the senior UN official branded a “heinous attack.”
A top provincial official said the blast was likely the latest in a string of attacks by Islamist militants seeking to extract revenge for a six-week offensive against them in swathes of the northwest.
Police hunting for the dead moved from room to room in the five-star hotel, large parts of which were reduced to rubble when three attackers shot security guards and then slammed an explosives-laden truck into the building.
“The blast is a reaction to the army offensive in Swat and Malakand. The possibility of this type of terrorist attack cannot be ruled out in future,” North West Frontier Province information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said.
He said the death toll had risen to 18, as police and rescue workers continued to pull people from the wreckage of Peshawar’s ritziest hotel.
Police investigator Abdul Ghafoor Afridi said 57 people were injured, including foreigners.
The UN said the dead included two of its employees — Serbian national Aleksandar Vorkapic, who worked for the refugee agency UNHCR, and Perseveranda So of the Philippines, who worked for children’s agency UNICEF.
Afridi said that three attackers in two vehicles shot their way through a security barrier and into the hotel compound, where they managed to detonate about 500kg of explosives packed in a small truck.
Grainy CCTV footage broadcast on Pakistani TV channels showed a car driving quickly through a security post, swiftly followed by the truck.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Also See: Pakistani troops pound Taliban in northwest region
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