PESHAWAR: A plaque on the wall of the guard booth at the gate of the Pearl Continental Hotel in the Pakistani city of Peshawar reads: “This hotel is protected by latest security system.”
That system failed late on Tuesday night when militants forced their way through the gate and a suicide truck-bomber drove up to the hotel and set off his explosives bringing down a corner of the five-story hotel.
Rescuers were picking through the rubble looking for more victims yesterday while heavy lifters were pulling mangled cars from the wreckage. Investigators searched the wrecked luxury hotel for evidence yesterday after the 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 Taleban tribal strongholds, intelligence officials told The Associated Press.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the blast followed Taleban 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 favorite 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 parking lot. Senior police official Safwat Ghayur said counterterrorism experts, police and intelligence agents were combing the rubble for clues yesterday.
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 showed the attackers in two vehicles: a white sedan 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 that killed more than 50 people.
Both hotels were favored places for foreigners and elite Pakistanis to stay and socialize, 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.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Army pounded Taleban fighters in a northwest region close to a lawless tribal belt yesterday, killing more insurgents as a military offensive spread, officials said.
Troops are already locked in a more than six-week battle against Islamist extremists in three northwestern districts, and officials said operations were now also under way in Bannu district bordering semi-autonomous Waziristan.
“We launched an operation in Jani Khel area against the militants. We are using artillery and helicopter gunships to target the miscreant positions,” a military official based in the area told AFP.
Security forces have since yesterday morning been attacking militants in Sarabangla, Hindi Khel and Jani Khel areas of Bannu, officials said. “According to reports gathered by us, at least 33 militants have been killed,” local police station chief Deen Nawaz told AFP.
Another senior military official, who did not want to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the media, told AFP: “At least 40 militants have been killed during the past 24 hours.”
