The Hindu : International : Peshawar blast claims 25 lives

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Wednesday, May 16, 2007
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Peshawar blast claims 25 lives

Nirupama Subramanian

Police suspect revenge attack by Taliban

— PHOTO: ap

MASSIVE BLAST: Officials examine the site of the suicide bombing inside a hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Tuesday.

ISLAMABAD: At least 25 persons were killed and many others wounded when a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up in a hotel in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province.

It was the peak lunch hour when the suicide bomber struck at the Marhaba Hotel in the congested central Peshawar, causing a carnage in the ground floor restaurant and damaging parts of the four-storeyed building.

The NWFP police said that they suspected a suicide bomber as there was no crater to indicate that it was a planted explosive device. The police said they recovered the suicide bomber's legs, on one of which was taped a message: "U.S. spies will meet this fate".

Afghans' haunt

The hotel, located close to a historic mosque, was popular with Afghan refugees in Peshawar, and most of those killed and wounded were Afghan nationals, including the owner of the restaurant.

The attack is being tentatively seen as a revenge attack for the killing of Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban leader, who is reported to have been killed in a U.S.-led military operation in southern Afghanistan.

Pakistan is part of the U.S.-led international coalition in the "war on terror".

Last month, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao had a narrow escape but 29 others were killed when a suicide bomber struck minutes after he finished addressing a rally in Charsadda, a town close to Peshawar.

Nearly 100 persons have been killed in suicide explosions and bomb attacks in Pakistan in the last eight months.

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