At least 60 die as suicide bombers hit Pakistan hotel

A massive lorry bomb devastated the heavily guarded Marriott Hotel in Pakistan's capital yesterday, engulfing the building in flames, killing at least 60 people and wounding more than 100, including three British High Commission staff.

The blast left a vast crater some 30ft deep in front of the main building, where flames poured from the windows. Fire immediately began in at least two places in the 290-room hotel and spread to other parts of the building. Police said people were still trapped inside. Last night a crane was brought in to try to get people out of the wrecked hotel, a favourite place for foreigners as well as Pakistani politicians and business people, despite repeated militant attacks.

Outside, beyond the huge crater by the hotel's heavy security barriers, the street was littered with debris and broken tree branches. Acrid smoke drifted in the air. Senior police official Asghar Raza Gardaizi said rescuers had counted at least 40 bodies and he feared that there "dozens more dead inside". Associated Press reporters saw at least nine bodies scattered at the scene. Scores of people ran out of the building, some of them splattered with blood.

The blast brought down the ceiling in a banquet room where there were 200 to 300 people at a meal to break the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan. Imtiaz Gul, a journalist, was among them. "We just ran for cover. I could see a lot of injured people lying around me," Mr Gul said.

A US State Department official using a section of white pipe as a walking stick led three colleagues through the rubble from the charred building, one of them bleeding heavily from a head wound. One of the four, who identified himself only as Tony, said they had begun moving toward the rear of the Chinese restaurant after the first blast when the second one threw them against the back wall. "Then we saw a big truck coming through the gates," he said. "After that it was just smoke and darkness."

Ambulances rushed to the area, picking their way through the charred carcasses of vehicles that had been in the street outside. At the hotel, rescuers ferried a stream of bloodied bodies from the gutted building. Police sought in vain to shoo away bystanders and reporters for fear of gas leaks and a possible collapse of the building.

Witnesses and officials said the disaster began after a large lorry rammed the high metal gate of the hotel at about 8pm local time, when the restaurants would have been packed with diners, including Muslims breaking the Ramadan fast. Some said there was a smaller explosion, followed by a much larger one. Windows in buildings hundreds of yards away were shattered. Mohammad Sultan, a hotel employee, said he was in the lobby when something exploded; he fell down and everything temporarily went dark. "I didn't understand what it was, but it was like the world was finished," he said.

The hotel has been bombed twice before but the Saturday evening blast was the most serious in the Pakistani capital since the country joined the US-led campaign against militancy in late 2001. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.

Hours before the blast President Asif Ali Zardari, making his first address to parliament, several hundred yards to the east of the hotel, said terrorism had to be rooted out. Pakistan has faced a wave of militant violence in recent weeks following army-led offensives against insurgents in its border regions. The capital has not been spared, though yesterday's blast appeared to be one of the largest ever terrorist attacks in the country. In July, a suicide bombing killed at least 18 people, most of them security forces, and wounded dozens in Islamabad as supporters of the Red Mosque gathered nearby to mark the anniversary of the military siege on the militant stronghold.

Mr Zardari and the Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, strongly condemned the attack in a statement. "This is terrorism and we have to fight it together as a nation," Rehman Malik, the head of Pakistan's interior ministry, told reporters at a hospital overflowing with the wounded.

Islamabad bombing is latest in a long list of recent attacks

Some of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Pakistan in recent years:

20 Sept 2008 A truck bomb devastates Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, killing at least 40 people and wounding more than 100.

21 Aug 2008 Suicide bombers blow themselves up at two gates leading to a mammoth weapons factory in the town of Wah, killing at least 67 people and wounding at least 70.

19 Aug 2008 Bomb explodes outside hospital, killing 23 people and wounding 15, in Dera Ismail Khan, a town in Pakistan's volatile North-West Frontier province.

11 March 2008 Suicide bombs rip through seven-storey police headquarters and house in Lahore, killing at least 24 people and wounding more than 200.

2 March 2008 Suicide bomber attacks tribesmen discussing resistance to al-Qa'ida and Taliban in Darra Adam Khel, killing at least 40.

29 Feb 2008 Suicide bomber strikes funeral of slain police officer in the town of Mingora in the Swat Valley, killing more than 40 people and injuring at least 60.

18 Oct 2007 Suicide bombing aimed at former prime minister Benazir Bhutto kills some 150 people in Karachi during celebrations welcoming her home from exile.

4 Sept 2007 Two bombs hit an army bus and commercial district in Rawalpindi, killing at least 24 people.

19 July 2007 Suicide attack on minibus carrying Chinese workers in Hub, near Karachi, kills at least 29 people.

14 July 2007 Suicide bomber attacks military convoy in North Waziristan, near Afghan border, killing at least 24 Pakistani soldiers.

8 Nov 2006 Man wearing explosives attacks troops doing calisthenics, killing at least 42 soldiers at army training centre in Dargai, a town in North-West Frontier province.