Suicide bomber kills 34 outside Pakistan hotel
A suicide bomber targeted workers queuing for their salaries outside a Pakistan bank and hotel on Monday, killing 34 people, as the United Nations pulled expatriate staff from the northwest.
The second large-scale bomb to kill civilians in less than a week, the attack near the army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi showed the enormity of the threat that Al-Qaeda-linked militants pose in Pakistan.
The explosion outside a building housing a bank and the four-star Shalimar Hotel showered the area with human flesh, smearing blood on the ground and shattering windows.
"Our building shook as if in an earthquake and when we came out there was smoke everywhere and body parts were thrown into our office," Raja Sher Ali, a marketing manager in a local company, told AFP.
A surge in bloodshed left more than 300 people dead last month as Pakistan presses a major offensive against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the tribal belt, where US officials say Al-Qaeda are plotting attacks on the West. Related article: Pakistan posts massive rewards for Taliban leaders
A senior police official said the latest attack was the work of a suicide bomber, although rescue workers said the cause of the blast was still unclear.
"The suicide bomber came on a motorcycle and blew up close to people gathered to get salaries. We found parts of a suicide vest and some body parts of the suicide attacker," senior police official Aslam Tarin told reporters.
Deeba Shehnaz, a rescue workers spokeswoman, told AFP there were 34 dead bodies lying in three different hospitals, with 32 people wounded.
The attack struck near the upmarket Pearl Continental Hotel and Pakistan's army headquarters, where 10 gunmen kept up a nearly 24-hour siege last month that left 23 people dead and deeply embarrassed the military.
Pakistan vowed to persevere in its US-endorsed fight against Islamist networks, which have killed more than 2,420 people in a wave of suicide attacks and bombings within the nuclear-armed Muslim nation since July 2007.
"It will not shake our determination to eradicate and to eliminate this menace," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on the sidelines of a conference of developing Islamic nations in Kuala Lumpur.
The plummeting security situation saw the United Nations announce Monday it was pulling out international staff from northwest Pakistan, days after at least 118 people were slaughtered in a car bomb in its local capital Peshawar.
"They will be relocated. Immediately," Ishrat Rizvi, a UN spokeswoman, told AFP of the international workers in the area, unable to say immediately how many staff the decision affected.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon raised the security level to "phase four" in the North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which US officials say are hotbeds of militancy.
"The decision has been taken bearing in mind the intense security situation in the region," the statement said.
On October 5, five UN World Food Programme workers died when a suicide bomber walked into their office in Islamabad and blew himself up. The TTP claimed responsibility.
Just over two weeks later, WFP closed distribution centres serving more than two million people in the northwest because of security fears.
Stepping up its assault on the Taliban, Pakistan on Monday offered rewards worth five million dollars for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of the country's Taliban warlord Hakimullah Mehsud and 18 lieutenants.
"They are the killers of humanity. Help the government of Pakistan to annihilate them," said a government advertisement in the press.
Mehsud, who took on the leadership after a US drone attack killed his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud in August, headed the list with 50 million Pakistan rupees (600,240 dollars) slapped on his head.
Ground troops have been locked in street battles for two days in Kanigurram, one of the largest towns in South Waziristan and described as a major operation centre for the TTP, wanted for some of the worst attacks in Pakistan.
