A huge explosion ripped through part of a luxury hotel in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, today, damaging buildings in a wide radius, killing scores and injuring many more.
The blast, one of the biggest seen in Pakistan in recent years, took place at the Marriott hotel. The hotel was left burning fiercely all along its facade with fears that it could totally collapse.
Scores of bodies were being brought out of the flaming building as rescue workers battled the blaze in scenes of chaos. There are fears that the final death toll is likely to be well into the hundreds.
Hotel staff said that all the Marriott's function rooms, including the large ballroom, had been hired for iftar – the traditional communal meal that breaks the day-long fast that Muslims observe during the holy month of Ramadan.
Senior police official Asghar Raza Gardezi said that the blast, one of the biggest such attacks in Pakistan for over a decade, was caused by more than a tonne of explosives.
Saleem Shahzad, a doctor, said he had been called to the hotel to check on an ill aircrew member staying there and was parking his car when the bomb went off. "I found myself carrying dozens of bodies across the street instead," he said.
Witnesses spoke of corpses strewn on the ground.
Scores of ambulances rushed to the scene, negotiating burned out vehicles scattered around the hotel and a vast crater left by the explosion.
Windows in buildings hundreds of metres away in residential areas and a heavily guarded compound where ministers have their official homes were damaged.
Such was the force of the blast the commandoes surrounded the residence of the prime minister who was dining with the chief of army staff, Ashfaq Kayani, fearing a rocket attack, sources said.
The Marriott is in the centre of the city, close to the national assembly, the main commercial thoroughfare and the national television headquarters.
A 250-room hotel with five restaurants, a bar, a swimming pool, a health club, spa, business centre and numerous function rooms, security has been high at the hotel since an attempted suicide bombing in 2007, foiled by a security guard.-link
The Marriott hotel in the centre of Islamabad has always been a major potential target for militants. For a long time it was the Pakistan capital's only luxury hotel and it remains the favoured haunt of the city's westernised elite. Only a few hundred metres from the National Assembly, opposite a compound of official residences for ministers, next to the new offices for Pakistan state television, an attack on the Marriott is an strike to the heart of the Pakistani state and the establishment elite of the 173 million strong nation.
And along with power, the Marriott symbolises something else for the ultra-conservative Islamic lobbies: Westernisation and its concomitant "moral decadence". The swimming pool where expats swam in bikinis, the sports bar in the basement where alcohol was served, the lurid stories of debauch that circulated, all contributed to making the Marriott a target of choice.
So did the political situation. Two major elements have come together. First, the accession of a new president, Benazir Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari, who is known to be relatively pro-Western and spoke yesterday about his determination to stand together with the international community in the fight against terrorism. Secondly, a sudden uptick in activity in the violence-wracked tribal agencies along the frontier with Afghanistan involving highly controversial raids into Pakistani territory. Both may have pushed militants from the various groups which form the "Pakistani Taliban" to strike – possibly aided and abetted by individuals from al-Qaida who have been instrumental in teaching insurgents on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani frontier how to make and use large vehicle-born suicide bombs. Last month The Observer interviewed one 21-year-old from the western Pakistani city of Bahawalpur who had been recruited by Taliban militants on the frontier, groomed as a suicide bomber and then given the mission of driving a large truck full of explosives into an American base in Afghanistan. Similar tactics were used to destroy the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad in 1995 and US embassies in eastern Africa in 1998.
However the militant may have miscalculated. The carnage is likely to be terrible. The attack at 8pm would have come just as hundreds were sitting or standing in the hotel's many function rooms for the communal iftar dinner – the breaking of the Ramadan month's fast. Almost all of those killed will be local Pakistanis – and even if most ordinary Pakistanis normally feel little sympathy for the elite who enjoyed the expensive delights of the luxury hotels – they will sympathise with this destruction of a ritual that epitomises family life and amity across the Muslim world.
So the horror of the attack is likely to make it counterproductive for the militants. The recent history of Islamic radical violence shows us that strikes on such targets – such as in Amman, Jordan, in 2005 – drastically undercuts support for militants. A similar phenomenon has been seen in Iraq in recent years, in Saudi Arabia too after a police station was hit and was observed in Algeria in the worst days of the violence of the 1990s civil war where massacres of hundreds of civilians discredited the so-called "mujahideen".
Already polls show support for Osama bin Laden and Islamic militants among most Pakistanis is dropping. This attack will accelerate the trend. In the battle for hearts and minds that is at the heart of this struggle, the killing of hundreds of men, women and children celebrating the end of a day's fast with their loved ones is a tragedy for all, a victory for no one.-link
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