Suicide bomber kills 35 outside Pakistan hotel

A suicide bomber targeted workers queuing for their salaries outside a Pakistani bank and hotel yesterday, killing 35 people as the United Nations pulled expatriate staff from the northwest.

The twin blows to Pakistan eclipsed the military’s announcement that troops had captured a key Taliban-held town during a major offensive in the tribal belt and offered $5 million for Taliban chiefs dead or alive.

Yesterday’s attack, near army headquarters in Rawalpindi, turned a routine day into bloodshed for the second time in less than a week, showing the enormity of the threat that al-Qaeda-linked militants pose in Pakistan.

The blast showered the area with human flesh, smeared blood on the ground and shattered the windows of a multi-storey block housing the bank and four-star Shalimar Hotel.

“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 violence left more than 300 people dead last month, when Pakistan began 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.

Yesterday evening two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a police checkpoint at the entrance to Lahore city, wounding seven people, a senior police official said.

“A car was stopped at the checkpost and the two suicide bombers in the car exploded themselves,” city police chief Pervez Rathor told reporters.

Commissioner Rathor said the car was packed with a huge quantity of explosives and “could have caused a catastrophe” had it entered the city.

The deadly Rawalpindi bombing was also the work of a suicide bomber, police said, although rescue workers said the cause 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.

“Thirty-five were killed and more than 60 wounded,” Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told a news conference. Four security personnel were among the dead and nine others wounded, the military said.

The attack occurred near 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 claimed more successes yesterday in its US-endorsed fight against Islamist networks which have killed more than 2,420 people within the nuclear-armed Muslim nation since July 2007.

“Kanigurram is now under the complete control of security forces,” Major General Athar Abbas told reporters, hailing what he called a “significant achievement” after two days of street battles in the South Waziristan town.