A massive suicide truck bomb devastated the heavily guarded Marriott Hotel in Pakistan's capital Saturday, killing at least 60 people and wounding at least 250. Officials feared there were dozens more dead inside the burning building. Witnesses and officials said a large truck had rammed the high metal gate of the hotel at about 8 P.M., when the hotel's restaurants were packed with diners breaking the Ramadan fast. Senior police official Asghar Raza Gardaizi said he feared that there “dozens more dead inside” the five-story hotel that was still ablaze well after midnight. Hospital staff said the injured included six Saudis, four Britons, four Germans and one each from the United States, Denmark, Morocco, Libya, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Ahmad Latif, a senior police official, said it was one of the biggest terrorist strikes in Pakistan history. TV reports described it as “Pakistan's 9/11.” There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast which happened just hours after President Asif Ali Zardari made his first address to Parliament. Rehman Malik, the head of Pakistan's Interior Ministry, said that authorities had received intelligence that there might be militant activity due to Zardari's address. Security had been tightened, he said. IntelCenter, a group which monitors Al-Qaeda communications, said senior Al-Qaeda leader Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid, who claimed the June Danish Embassy bombing in Islamabad, threatened additional attacks against Western interests in Pakistan in a video timed to the recent anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. A security guard, Mohammad Nasir and several witnesses said a large truck had driven toward the gate before exploding. The guards were trying to stop it when the driver ignited the blast, they said. Mohammed Asghar, a worker from a nearby office with a makeshift bandage round his head, said there was more than one man in the truck and that they had argued with the hotel guards. “Then there was a flash of light, the truck caught fire and then exploded with an enormous bang,” he said. Mohammad Sultan, a hotel employee, was in the lobby when something exploded. He fell down and everything temporarily went dark. “I didn't understand what it was, but it was like the world is finished,” he said. The blast destroyed dozens of cars outside, shattered windows, damaged buildings hundreds of meters away and left a vast crater some 10 meters deep in front of the main building, where flames poured from the windows and rescuers ferried out a stream of bloodied bodies. A US State Department official led three colleagues through the rubble from the charred building, one of them bleeding heavily from a wound on the side of his head. “We live in a dangerous world and this is a terrible tragedy. We grieve for those people who died, or were injured, and their families,” Bill Marriott, chairman and CEO of Marriott International, said in a statement.
