Terror strikes heart of capital

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Sajjad Malik
ISLAMABAD: Panic blanketed the capital city Saturday evening after a huge suicide blast almost destroyed the Marriott Hotel giving it the look of some derelict building.

The hotel is located in the high security zone, with Pak Secretariat, Parliament House, President House, Supreme Court building, the Punjab House, Balochistan House, Frontier House, and Kashmir House standing within a radius of almost a kilometer.

The blast was heard as far as 30 kilometers. The hotel building could be seen engulfed in flames, with dozens of firefighters locked in a fierce battle with the leaping flames. The windowpanes of the nearby houses and shopping malls came crashing down. Some of the trees located near the hotel were also uprooted.

There were pools of blood all around. At some places rescuers were seen removing people buried under the rubble. Blood-soaked bodies of visitors and hotel staff were seen scattered here and there. Some of the victims were hit by silvers from the broken windowpanes while other became direct victim of the blast.

Around 100 cars parked in the parking of the hotel and outside were reduced to a total wreck.

People rushed out of their houses soon after the blast. Some of them raced to the hotel and assisted the rescue teams in carting off the injured to the nearby hospitals.

The blast also damaged the buildings of the adjacent Evacuee Trust Board, Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) and PTV. Traffic came to a halt for a while after the incident and traders put up their shutters for fear of a similar attack.

“I was in the Evacuee Trust Building when I heard the sound of a deafening blast that knocked me down. I had a blackout that last a few moments. However, soon after gathering my senses, I got up and started running until I was far away from the scene,” Ihsan told Daily Times. Akhtar, an employee of PTV, said that he and some of his friends were standing in the lawn of the PTV building discussing some issue when the blast took place.

“It was a huge blast that made me go weak at the knees. However, I gathered myself and the next moment I was running to a safer place,” he said.

Ahmad, a common citizen, who visited the blast scene soon after it took place, said that he had not seen destruction of such a vast magnitude in his life.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...008_pg11_1