ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) — Three suicide attackers shot their way onto the grounds of a five-star hotel in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar and set off a car bomb, killing at least seven people and wounding dozens, officials said.
The blast inflicted severe damage on the building, which is surrounded by a security wall, and destroyed dozens of cars in the parking lot, police and witnesses said.
The information minister for Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, put the death toll at 11, with at least 50 wounded.
Qhazi Jamil, senior superintendent of Peshawar police, told CNN three gunmen in a pickup fired on security guards at the hotel’s entrance gate and forced their way inside before setting off the bomb.
Peshawar is the capital of North West Frontier Province, which has suffered a spate of bombings on civilian targets in the wake of the Pakistani military’s ongoing military offensive against Taliban militants.
Sajjan Gohel, an international security analyst at the Asia-Pacific Foundation in Britain, said the blast appeared to be a response to the government’s offensive.
The Pearl Continental is owned by the same group as the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which was destroyed in a suicide truck bombing in September.
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Source: Ingrid Formanek and Reza Sayah? (2009). Bomb rips through Pakistan hotel, CNN http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/06/09/pakistan.hotel/index.html published Jun 9, 2009. Viewed June 10, 2009,