The White House and British government have condemned a suicide car-bombing in Islamabad that killed at least 40 people, with the US calling it a “reminder of the threat we all face.”
"The United States strongly condemns the terrorist attack that took place in Islamabad, Pakistan," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
"The United States will stand with Pakistan's democratically elected government as they confront this challenge."
The bombing is the third targeting the American chain hotel in Islamabad and comes amid stepped up US strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban militants believed to be hiding in the remote ethnic Pashtun region of Pakistan along its border with Afghanistan.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told BBC News 24: "Our help for the government of Pakistan is obviously on the security side, we have shared interests on the Afghan/Pakistan border because obviously British troops are in danger in Afghanistan".
"We also want to support their economic and social development because in the longer term that is critical to winnowing out the extremists, marginalising the extremists and to make sure that the decent majority in Pakistan turn their face against this violent extremism," he added.
The explosion came hours after new President Asif Ali Zardari, widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, made his first address to parliament a few hundred metres away from the hotel, calling for terrorism to be rooted out.