Bombed Pakistan hotel reopens

THE luxury Marriott hotel in Islamabad reopened yesterday, just three months after it was destroyed in a suicide truck bombing that killed 60 people, the worst attack in Pakistan this year.

The bomber had rammed a truck containing 600kg of high explosives into the outer gates of the hotel on September 20, sending shock waves through the capital.

“I have made this hotel a fortress,” Sadruddin Hashwani, the owner of the Marriott and one of Pakistan’s richest men, said as he lit candles in front of huge pictures of employees killed in the attack.

Officials blamed the bombing on the Sunni Muslim extremist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has links to Al-Qaeda. Six people have been detained in connection with it.

The hotel is surrounded by a new bombproof wall which is 3.5m high and 4m thick, and visitors now have to pass through a bombproof room within it to gain access to the hotel.