PESHAWAR: The death toll from a suicide blast at a luxury hotel in Pakistan's northwest Peshawar city has risen to 14, while 57 people were injured, a police official said Wednesday.
Early reports suggest at least two men shot their way through a security barrier and rammed a pick-up truck packed with explosives into the five-star Pearl Continental hotel late Tuesday, causing massive devastation.
"Three more dead bodies including the body of a police official were recovered from the debris this morning (Wednesday)," Abdul Ghafoor Afridi, a senor police official in Peshawar, said.
"Now the death toll has risen to 14 and there are 57 injured. The number of casualties could rise as we fear that some people are still trapped under the debris. One portion of the hotel was totally destroyed," he added.
"Three people including a manger of the hotel are missing and we fear they are under the debris."
Two foreign United Nations workers -- Serbian Aleksandar Vorkapic with the refugee agency and Filipina Perseveranda So with the children's agency -- were killed, the UN said, while many foreigners were among the injured.
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 said.
"Occupants of a double-cabin pick-up truck forced their way in, firing at the security guards. The attackers struck their vehicle into the hotel building, and it exploded on impact."
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
Senior police officer Abdul Ghafoor Afridi said there were at least two attackers, and they were wearing security guard uniforms.
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.
"When I managed to get out of the room, I saw flames and security guards lead me to a safe side."
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.
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.
"I was sitting in the eastern side of the hotel building and suddenly there was a huge blast which tumbled my chair and I fell on the ground. As I rose from the ground I saw flames and smoke," hotel employee Ghulam Ahmed said.
Senior police officer Shafqat Malik said more than 500 kilograms of explosives were used. Witnesses said the blast shattered windows of a provincial assembly and Peshawar High Court nearby.
Tuesday's attack echoes a suicide truck bomb attack on the luxury Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September 2008 that killed 60 people.
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.
On Friday, a suicide bomb ripped through a mosque packed with worshippers, also in the northwest of the country, killing 38 people and wounding dozens more in the deadliest such attack in more than two months.
The Taliban in Pakistan have warned of more "massive attacks" in retaliation for the military operations against them in Swat, Lower Dir and Buner.
Source:TOI
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