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MAF Blogger Danny
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In the second major attack by radical Islamic terrorists this week, a suicide bomber tried to get a truck into the lobby of the Marriot hotel in Pakistan’s capital city of Islamabad.

He was able to get his truck through the first security gate, but the guard at the inner second gate was suspicious and refused to let the truth through.  At that point the driver detonated explosive he had tied to himself which caused an explosion and a fire that, several minutes later, set off the 1,300 pounds of explosives set in the back of the truck.

The bomb left a 30 foot deep, 60 foot wide crater in the ground which seems to indicate that if the bomber had been successful in smashing the truck into the lobby of the hotel and then detonating himself – which was his plan apparently – this bombing would have been much MUCH worse and cost many more than 60 lives.

From Associated Press:

The hotel, a favorite spot for foreigners and the Pakistani elite - and a previous target of militants - still smoldered from a fire that raged for hours after the previous day’s explosion, which also wounded more than 250 people.

The targeting of the American hotel chain came at a time of growing anger in the Muslim nation over a wave of cross-border strikes on militant bases in Pakistan by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The owner of the hotel accused security forces of a serious lapse in allowing a dump truck to approach the hotel unchallenged and not shooting the driver before he could trigger the explosives.

“If I were there and had seen the suicide bomber, I would have killed him. Unfortunately, they didn’t,” Sadruddin Hashwani said.
Officials said vehicles carrying construction materials are allowed to move after sunset, meaning the sight of a dump truck near the government quarters might not have aroused suspicion.

Terrorism researcher Evan Kohlmann told the AP the attack was almost certainly the work of either al-Qaida or the Pakistani Taliban.

“It seems that someone has a firm belief that hotels like the Marriott are serving as ‘barracks’ for Western diplomats and intel personnel, and they are gunning pretty hard for them,” Kohlmann said.

Read about it from AP NEWS here: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080921/D93B4KB00.html

In a different report also from an AP source reports that the bombing was probably a direct response to the Pakistan’s new President’s inauguration.

“The fire has eaten the entire building,” said Mohammed Ali, an emergency service official at the scene. He said that after an initial chaotic search to find survivors, rescue teams had only been able to make two brief forays inside but found no bodies or survivors and had to retreat quickly.

The bombing came just hours after President Asif Ali Zardari made his first address to Parliament, less than a mile away from the hotel, and days ahead of the new leader’s meeting with President Bush Tuesday in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
…

He said he understood the victims’ pain because he had buried his own wife — assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto — in December.

“Make this pain your strength,” he said. “This is a menace, a cancer in Pakistan which we will eliminate. We will not be scared of these cowards,” he [Zardari] said.

LINK: http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/hc-pakistan0921.artsep21,0,5760603.story

While at the time of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, many had pointed fingers at General Musharraf, US Officials believe, and this attack would seem to corroborate, that Al-Qaeda was responsible

LINK: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/12/27/bhutto.dhs.alqaeda/index.html

The Times of India reports this is the 20th major terrorist attack in Pakistan since the beginning of 2008.

We pray for the families of the victims and can only hope that this troubling news for the people of Pakistan will encourage the government to strengthen its cooperation with US forces operating on the border regions of Afghanistan to hunt down and take out Taliban and Al Qaeda forces remaining along the border Peshawar region.