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Pakistan hotel hit by deadly blast
A bomb blast in Peshawar in the northwest of Pakistan has killed at least 24 people and injured many more, officials say.
Reports said the explosion on Tuesday occurred in a crowded area of central Peshawar and may have originated from the four-storey Marhaba Hotel.
"We do not know whether it was a suicide attack or if someone had put explosives in the hotel. I can only confirm that there was a big blast," Sharif Virk, a provincial police chief, was reported as saying.
Local television reports initially put the number of dead at 16, but the figure was disputed and rose quickly.
"I have myself counted 21 bodies," said Mohabbat Khan, a doctor at the Lady Reading hospital where most casualties were taken.
Brigadier Javed Cheema, a spokesman for the interior ministry, gave a death toll of at least 19 and added that the authorities were investigating whether or not the device "was planted in advance".
More
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1F461B51-8B97-4371-8B54-C2713503852B.htm
"We do not know whether it was a suicide attack or if someone had put explosives in the hotel. I can only confirm that there was a big blast," Sharif Virk, a provincial police chief, was reported as saying.
Local television reports initially put the number of dead at 16, but the figure was disputed and rose quickly.
"I have myself counted 21 bodies," said Mohabbat Khan, a doctor at the Lady Reading hospital where most casualties were taken.
Brigadier Javed Cheema, a spokesman for the interior ministry, gave a death toll of at least 19 and added that the authorities were investigating whether or not the device "was planted in advance".
More
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1F461B51-8B97-4371-8B54-C2713503852B.htm
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The ground-floor blast demolished parts of the four-storey Marhaba hotel near a busy market, trapping people inside.
Up to 30 people were injured, officials said. Ambulances and hand-pushed carts were used to ferry them to hospital.
The motive for the attack is not known. Peshawar has seen many recent attacks, some causing serious loss of life.
Rescue efforts
The Marhaba, in Peshawar's old city, is popular with tribal visitors from Afghanistan.
More
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6656933.stm
The incident heightens political tension as the president, General Pervez Musharraf, faces a growing challenge to his rule over his suspension of the country's top judge.
The attack appeared unrelated to that issue, but rather the work of Islamist extremists.
The provincial police chief Sharif Virk said investigators had found the legs of the suicide bomber, with a message taped to one leg. It said spies for America would meet the fate of those killed in the blast.
More
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2079936,00.html
The bomb went off in the ground-floor restaurant of the four-story Marhaba Hotel in an old quarter of Peshawar, a city near the Afghan border, leaving a carnage of corpses and body parts scattered among broken tables and shattered crockery.
Investigators found a message taped to one leg of the bomber, saying that spies for America would meet the fate of those killed in the blast, provincial police chief Sharif Virk said. The message also included the Persian word "Khurasan" — often used in militant videos to describe Afghanistan.
Two security officials told The Associated Press that a close relative of Dadullah had been arrested in the restaurant a few days before Tuesday's attack. The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, refused to be identified.
They declined to say whether the arrest of the relative had helped the U.S. military kill Dadullah in an operation in southern Afghanistan over the weekend — one of the most senior militant leaders to die since the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001 for hosting al-Qaida.
Earlier, Javed Iqbal Cheema, a top Pakistani counterterrorism official, told a news conference he did not think the bombing was linked to Dadullah, and denied that Pakistan had provided any intelligence that led to his killing.
More
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2548591.ece