Lethal Bomb Hits Hotel in Northwest Pakistan - NYTimes.com

Lethal Bomb Hits Hotel in Northwest Pakistan - NYTimes.com

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Militants opened fire on security guards and rushed a small truck packed with explosives through the gates of a five-star hotel in this northwestern city on Friday, detonating a huge bomb in the parking lot that killed at least 11 people and wounded 55, Pakistani officials said.



Witnesses said the blast left a crater six feet deep and 15 feet wide and was powerful enough to be heard for miles. Police officials estimated that more than 1,000 pounds of explosives were used.

Television images showed parts of the hotel reduced to rubble and wounded people with blood-soaked clothes being helped out of the smoke-filled lobby of the hotel, the Pearl Continental, one of the few in the city that cater to Western visitors. The hotel’s guests included United Nations officials and an airline crew, officials said, and five women and three foreigners were among the dead. Two United Nations World Food Program officials were wounded, one critically, a United Nations official in Pakistan said.

“The floor under my feet shook,” The Associated Press quoted one wounded guest, Jawad Chaudhry, as saying. He had been in his room at the time of the bombing.

“I thought the roof was falling on me,” he said. “I ran out. I saw everybody running in panic. There was blood and pieces of glass everywhere.”

The attack was the largest against a Western target in Pakistan since the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in the capital, Islamabad, last September, which left more than 50 dead.

The bombing at the Pearl Continental, which is well set back from a major roadway, employed tactics similar to an attempted assault on the headquarters of the Pakistani intelligence service in Lahore on May 28. While that attack fell short of its target, it left 26 people dead.

The Pearl Continental bombing followed threats last week by Taliban leaders, who warned Pakistanis that they were preparing “major attacks” in large cities in retaliation for the military’s campaign against insurgents in parts of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province.

Peshawar, capital of the province and gateway to the tribal areas where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have made a base, has been the scene of frequent incursions by the insurgents and of bombings in the past.

On the day of the Taliban warning, three bombs detonated in and around Peshawar, including at an electronics market and a police check point, as well as in Dera Ismail Khan, in the country’s troubled west, killing at least 11 people and wounding dozens.

The attack at the Pearl Continental was far larger and more complex.