PESHAWAR – Militants attacked a hotel popular with foreigners in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar with guns and a truck bomb yesterday, killing five people and wounding 70, government and security officials said.
Taliban militants stepped up bomb attacks after the military launched an offensive in the former tourist valley of Swat and neighbouring districts northwest of the capital in April. A reporter saw two wounded foreigners coming out of the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar, which security officials said militants attacked with guns and a suspected suicide truck-bomb.
“I was in the Chinese restaurant when we heard firing and then a blast. It was totally dark and people started shouting and running,” said hotel waiter Ali Khan.
Intelligence officials said some attackers scaled the wall of the hotel and opened fire before a big truck-bomb blast in the front car park. Dozens of cars were destroyed. A hospital official said a wounded foreign woman worked for the United Nations children’s fund. The UN is heavily involved in providing relief for more than 2.5 million people displaced by the fighting in Swat and elsewhere in the northwest.
A suicide truck bombing killed 55 people in September last year at Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel.
The US, which needs sustained Pakistani action to help defeat al-Qaeda and cut off militant support for the Afghan Taliban, has been heartened by the resolve the government and military are showing in the Swat offensive.
Alarmed by the possibility of nuclear-armed Pakistan drifting into chaos, the US had criticised a February pact with the Taliban in Swat. It was not immediately clear how many attackers were involved in the Peshawar hotel attack and what their fate was.
Earlier yesterday, the army came to the help of a pro-government militia fighting the Taliban in a northwestern district after outrage over a suspected Taliban bomb attack at a mosque last week that killed about 40 people.
The villagers’ action is the latest example of people turning on the Taliban in recent weeks, underscoring the shift in public opinion away from the Islamists.
Senior police officer Rahim Gul said two army helicopters had attacked militants surrounded by militia fighters in a village in the Upper Dir district. He said more people were joining the militia and it was making advances after heavy clashes. Paramilitary soldiers set up mortars on high ground above the village. About 25 militants were killed in the fighting, police and military said.
US director of national intelligence Dennis Blair said on Monday that Pakistan’s army was gaining in its offensive because public support was solidifying.
The military says troops have cleared most of Swat, though soldiers are encountering pockets of resistance. The army said yesterday afternoon that 14 militants and one soldier had been killed in Swat in the previous 24 hours. In all, it says over 1,300 militants and 105 soldiers have been killed.
US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke also said on Monday that Pakistani public opinion was increasingly on the government’s side, and he renewed calls for other western countries to provide more aid for the displaced. The US has pledged more than $300 million for the crisis, compared with less than $200 million from the rest of the world, he said. – (Reuters)