Aid workers among 11 dead in hotel blast

Investigators searched a wrecked luxury hotel in north-western Pakistan for evidence today after a bold suicide bombing killed 11 people, including aid workers, in what the UN condemned as a “heinous terrorist attack”.

Elsewhere in the volatile region, security forces killed 70 suspected militants in an area close to two major Taliban tribal strongholds, intelligence officials said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing on Tuesday of the Peshawar Pearl Continental, but the blast followed Taliban threats to carry out major attacks in large cities to avenge an army offensive against insurgents in the nearby Swat Valley.

At least three suicide attackers shot their way past guards and set off the explosion outside the hotel, a favourite spot for foreigners and well-off Pakistanis and a site that the US was considering for its consulate.

The attack reduced a section of the hotel to concrete rubble and twisted steel and left a huge crater in a car park.

Senior police official Safwat Ghayur said counterterrorism experts, police and intelligence agents were combing the rubble for clues.

The Pearl Continental, affectionately called the “PC” by Pakistanis, is the ritziest hotel in the rugged frontier city of 2.2 million.

Security camera footage show the attackers in two vehicles: a white car and a small truck. The vehicles pull up to a guard post outside the hotel, with the car in front. A puff of smoke appears near the car window. A guard collapses, apparently shot. The vehicles move into the hotel compound. A flash and eruption of dust follow seconds later.

The truck was carrying more than half a ton of explosives, senior police officer Shafqatullah Malik estimated.

The chaotic scene echoed a bombing last year at Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel which killed more than 50 people. Both hotels were favoured places for foreigners and elite Pakistanis to stay and socialise, making them high-profile targets for militants despite tight security.

Both hotels are owned by Sadruddin Hashwani, who vowed to rebuild quickly and claimed the government was partly to blame for the attack by not providing better security.

“This is (the) government’s failure,” Hashwani told Geo TV, claiming that government ministers get much better security escorts than the high-profile Pearl.

“Government needs to think seriously who they have to give security – to foreigners or the ministers. Half of the hotel’s occupants were foreigners.”

North West Frontier Province senior minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour denied the government was at fault and said closed-circuit TV footage showed the hotel had removed some security barriers.

“I do not buy that there was any security lapse. There was enough security arrangements made by the government,” Bilour said. “I would say that this was a failure on part of the hotel management’s security. We are at war. Terrorists are out to cause big losses.”

The exact death toll remained unclear today.

North West Frontier Province Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said that officials reported 11 fatalities. Other police and government officials could confirm only five dead.

The three attackers also died, said an intelligence official.

UN spokeswoman Amena Kamaal said three bodies pulled from the rubble Wednesday were two Pakistani government staffers whose work was funded by the UN’s population agency, along with their driver.

The UN also identified staff members among the dead – Aleksandar Vorkapic, 44, from Belgrade, Serbia, and Unicef staffer Perseveranda So, 52, from the Philippines.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday condemned the hotel bombing as a “heinous terrorist attack”.

Peshawar and other Pakistani towns and cities have weathered a wave of bombings in recent months that has only intensified since the Swat offensive began over a month ago.