Eleven die in blast at Pakistan hotel

PESHAWAR – A huge suicide truck bomb ripped through a luxury hotel on Tuesday killing 11 people and wounding 52 in Pakistan’s Peshawar city, capital of a northwest province plagued by Taliban violence.

Two foreigners were among the dead in the devastating blast at the five-star Pearl Continental hotel, provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told AFP, but would not reveal the nationalities.At least two gunmen in a pick-up truck entered the hotel compound, spraying security guards with bullets before ramming the vehicle into the building and detonating, with foreign nationals among those injured, police said.It is the seventh deadly bombing to hit the troubled city in a month, as fears grow that Taliban militants are exacting revenge for a punishing six-week military offensive against them in three northwest districts.’It was a suicide attack,’ city police chief Sefwat Ghayur told AFP.Provincial police chief Malik Naveed told AFP: ‘Eleven people have been killed. The toll is likely to rise.’No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.Chaos enveloped the hotel popular with dignitaries, officials and foreign visitors, with smoke billowing around the building in the high-security Khyber Road area of Peshawar, capital of North West Frontier Province.’The blast was so huge that I thought my ear drums were damaged forever. I fell from the chair and saw others also falling and the glass shards scattered in the meeting room,’ said charity worker and hotel client Zarshaid Khan.Sahib Gul, a doctor at Peshawar’s main Lady Reading Hospital, said six foreigners were among the 52 injured.Among them was a British citizen, the Foreign Office in London confirmed.A United Nations worker was reported to be among the dead, a provincial official said.Rows of balconies appeared to have been ripped off the face of the hotel, where rescue workers struggled to help those trapped inside. A clutch of United Nations vehicles were among dozens of charred cars parked outside.The injured and confused stumbled among twisted metal, with rubble strewn among the once-manicured lawns of the hotel, just opposite the historic Bala Hisar Fort and Peshawar’s golf course.Senior police official Shafqat Malik told AFP that more than 500 kilograms of explosives were used. Witnesses said the blast shattered windows of a provincial assembly and Peshawar High Court nearby. Pakistan has been hit by a string of devastating attacks in recent weeks, with markets and security targets hit in Peshawar and police buildings targeted in Islamabad and the cultural capital Lahore. The Taliban in Pakistan have warned of more ‘massive attacks’ in retaliation for the military operations against them in Swat, Lower Dir and Buner. The current US-backed campaign was launched when Taliban fighters advanced to within 100 kilometres of Islamabad, flouting a deal to put three million people under sharia law in exchange for peace. Nearly 2 000 people have been killed in Taliban-linked attacks across Pakistan since July 2007.