Scorpio
At least 53 people were killed and nearly 300 injured in Saturday's bombing, making it the worst act of terrorism ever on Pakistani soil. A suicide bomber ignited a truck filled with explosives, and the resulting blast destroyed nearly all of the hotel's 300 rooms. Al Qaeda and the Taliban had threatened Pakistan's cities, but this attack has been claimed by Fidayeen-e-Islam, a little-known militant group based in western Pakistan.
Eyewitness accounts published by the BBC claim the force of the blast was felt as far as 10 miles away. Says Islamabad resident Mehreen Khalid:
- ...the rooms, walls, floor shook, as if a huge tremor was going through. The feeling was strangely reminiscent of the devastating earthquake we faced in October 2005.
While many are still recovering from the attack, others are trying to explain it, and conspiracy theories abound.
COMMENTS (1)
RATE THIS STORY
Nude photos of the MTV reality star surfaced on the...
A few weeks ago David Sedaris stopped by Long Beach to talk about his work,
Comments
Re: Today On Channel C: Islamabad Hotel Bombed
By Heather Wallace, September 23, 2008 at 08:34I was having dinner with a man from Karachi and asked him about this bombing...whether he knew anyone involved. He sort of scoffed and said of course he knew, in that Pakistan is really quite a small world. And his uncle owned the hotel. I'll be sending him some questions about the situation in Pakistan, as he definitely had an important perspective on the terror tradition in his home country, explaining it's driven almost entirely by money and insurance claims on lost lives, not Al Qaeda. He says the real story is not at all what you read in the papers.
Heather Wallace
senior editor
Orato.com