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Blast in Islamabad targets foreigners, one dead
CIA OFFICERS TARGETED, ACCORDING TO HAMID MIR
By OnTheWeb Sunday, March 16, 2008Islamabad: A Turkish woman was killed and 15 were injured after an explosion at a restaurant popular with foreigners in Islamabad.
Pakistani officials said a Turkish woman, who worked as a nurse in the US embassy, was killed in the attack. Earlier reports had identified the deceased as an American.
Among those injured were three US citizens, two Japanese journalists, three Pakistanis and one Chinese, said city police chief Nadeem Baloch. A staff member from Britain’s High Commission in Islamabad was lightly injured in the blast.
The explosion at the Italian Luna Caprese restaurant in the busy Super Market occurred at about 8:40 pm local time (2110 hrs IST) and could be heard from several kilometres away.
The explosion knocked down a 5-meter-long (15-foot-long) wall behind the restaurant. The wall collapsed outward into a street, suggesting that the bomb exploded inside the restaurant’s garden, said police officer Irshad Abro.
The blast created panic in the city and police immediately cordoned off the area. A witness said the explosion occurred in a garden dining area at the rear of the restaurant, which is frequented by diplomats, aid agency workers, and journalists.
Hamid Mir, Bureau Chief of the private Geo TV news channel, told CNN-IBN his sources had told him the blast might have targeted officials of the America’s Central Intelligence Agency who were sitting inside the restaurant.
It appeared to be the first attack targeting foreigners in a recent wave of violence. The bomb struck two days before Pakistan’s new parliament was set to convene following recent elections.
Recent blasts in Pakistan
2008
March 1: 30 killed in a suicide bomb attack at a funeral in northwestern Pakistan.
January 14: Seven people, including a child, killed and 40 others injured in a blast in an industrial area in Karachi.
January 7: Eight killed in an al-Qaeda attack on two offices of government-sponsored peace movements in northwest Pak.
2007
December 31: Benazir Bhutto’s assassination sparks violent protests leaving 47 dead.
December 27: Benazir Bhutto and 16 others killed in a gun and bomb attack after a rally in Rawalpindi.
December 21: 41 people killed in a suicide attack at a mosque in northwest Pakistan during Eid festival prayers.
December 17: 10 military recruits killed in a suicide attack in the northwestern town of Kohat.
November 24: 15 people killed in Rawalpindi in twin suicide attack, on the eve of the return of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif from exile.
October 25: 21 people, including 17 soldiers, killed in a suspected suicide attack on an army convoy in the northwestern Swat valley.
October 19: 139 killed in a suicide attack on Benazir Bhutto’s motorcade as she is driven through Karachi after arriving home from eight years in self-exile.
