A powerful blast occurred outside a hotel in a high-security area near Pakistan Army’s headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Monday, killing at least twenty four people and injuring several others.
The explosion at around 10.40 am caused considerable damage to the facade of Shalimar Hotel on Mall Road, a short distance from the Army’s General Headquarters.
Police officials said they believed the bomb was planted in a car or motorcycle parked outside the hotel.
Several Army officers’ messes, sensitive military installations and other hotels are located near the building.
Military police and paramilitary personnel cordoned off the area and diverted traffic from the road in front of the hotel.
Ambulances and fire fighting vehicles rushed to the site to launch rescue operations. An emergency was declared in hospitals in Rawalpindi.
Eyewitness and reporters of TV news channels said at least 10 people had died in the blast.
An army officer was among the injured, they said. The attack came nearly a month after an audacious terrorist attack on the General Headquarters in which 14 people were killed before most of the attackers were gunned down by army commandos.
The attackers had also taken nearly 50 people hostage in an office of the Military Intelligence agency.
Taliban militants have struck several times, killing about 250 people in recent weeks, in what are believed to be retaliatory strikes against an army offensive in Pakistan’s
northwest.
Some 115 people, mostly women and children, were killed when a car bomb packed with 150 kg of explosives ripped through a bustling commercial hub in Peshawar last week, coinciding with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Pakistan visit.
