Car bomber kills 34 as terror target hotel reopens

A suicide bomber pretending to need help with his car killed 34 people in north-west Pakistan as the Marriott hotel in Islamabad partially reopened three months after a brazen truck bombing left 54 dead.

The Marriott building was badly damaged by the September blast – blamed on a Pakistani militant group accused of killing US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 - but renovations, a security overhaul and the addition of a giant bombproof wall meant the luxury hotel was ready to welcome guests again, the owner, Saddaruddin Hashwani, said yesterday.

“We have expressed our resolve that we will not bow before the enemies of Pakistan,” he said.

The suicide attack at a polling station close to the Swat Valley, comes amid concern that extremist violence is set to increase now that Pakistan is shifting troops away from the region towards India.

The military has not confirmed the troop movements, but it has restricted military leave and reports said thousands were being redeployed away from the north west – where many al-Qaida and Taliban militants are based – towards the eastern border with India amid tensions over last month’s attacks in Mumbai.

India blames Pakistani militants for the slaughter of 164 people in its commercial capital and it has not ruled out force. But leaders of both nuclear-armed countries insist they want to avoid what would be their fourth war.

The targeted polling station was in a school in Buner, a district bordering the Swat Valley, where the Pakistani army has waged an intermittent offensive against militants for more than a year. The explosion wounded 14 people, five of them critically.

“The suicide attacker parked his car outside the polling station and asked people to push the vehicle, saying it had broken down,” said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for the region containing the Swat Valley. “The moment people started pushing the car, he blew it up.”

Pakistan’s defence minister Ahmad Mukhtar condemned the attack, saying “cowardice and inhuman acts could not weaken the government’s resolve to eliminate the scourge of terrorism and violent extremism”.