By IRNA,
Islamabad : At least 60 people including seven foreigners were killed and dozens injured on Saturday in a suspected suicide car bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in
Islamabad.
“A car laden with explosives rammed the gate at the Marriott and so far we have brought out 60 dead bodies, but the number could well be higher,” police chief Asghar Raza Gardazi told IRNA.
The hotel was badly damaged and caught fire after the blast, which destroyed dozens of cars outside and shattered windows and damaged buildings hundreds of metres (yards) away.
Police at the scene said 40 bodies had been taken away and people were still trapped inside. A crane was brought in to try to get people out.
Fire began in at least two places in the building and spread to other parts of the 290-room hotel, located at the foot of the Margalla hills in the city centre.
There was a large crater in the road by the hotel’s heavy security barriers. The street was littered with debris and broken branches from roadside trees and acrid smoke drifted in the air.
The blast brought down the ceiling in a banquet room where there were about 200 to 300 people at a meal to break the fast during the holy month of Ramazan, Imtiaz Gul, a journalist, was among them.
“We just ran for cover, I could see a lot of injured people lying around me,” Gul said.