Islamabad hotel targeted twice in as many years

The explosion killed the bomber and the securityman besides injuring seven others. Indian High Commissioner Satyabrata Pal went ahead with the plans to hold a reception on the same evening to mark Republic Day.

Previously, the Islamabad Marriott Hotel, seen as a US symbol, saw a major explosion in October 2004. Eight people,including one US diplomat and two hotel employees, were wounded in the blast. Following the blast, the US

Embassy had asked diplomats and travellers not to visit the hotel. The Marriott is a popular haunt of Islamabad’s Western expatriates. Its nightclub has one of very few licensed bars in Pakistan,only open to foreigners.

Another facility of the American hotel chain was targeted in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on August 5, 2003. A suicide bomber detonated a car bomb outside the lobby of the hotel, killing 12 people and injuring 150 others.

Marriott International has about 3,000 lodging properties located in the United States and 67 other countries, including India.

Recent blasts in pakistan

July 14, 2007 Suicide car-bomber kills 24 paramilitary soldiers and wounds 29 in North Waziristan

July 15 Sixteen people, most of them paramilitary soldiers, killed in an ambush while on patrol in the Swat valley in North West Frontier Province. A suicide bomber targets a police recruiting centre in Dera Ismail Khan in NWFP, killing 29

July 17 Suicide bomber kills 16 people outside a court in Islamabad, where suspended chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, was due to speak

July 19 Three suicide attacks in a single day in three towns kill at least 52 people.

July 27 Suicide bomb attack in a restaurant near Islamabad’s Red Mosque kills 13 people, most of them cops

Sept 4 Two suicide bombers kill 25 in Rawalpindi

Sept 11 Suicide bomber kills 16 people in northwest Dera Ismail Khan

Sept 13 At least 15 soldiers killed in suicide bombing in an army canteen near Islamabad

Oct 19 At least 139 people killed in suicide bomb attack on Benazir Bhutto’s motorcade. The attack is one of the deadliest in Pakistan’s history

Oct 25 Suspected suicide bomber kills 21 people, including 17 soldiers, in an attack on an army convoy in Swat

Nov 24 Suicide car bomb attacks kill 15 in Rawalpindi, on the eve of the return of Nawaz Sharif from exile

Dec 17 A suicide bomber kills 10 military recruits in Kohat

Dec 21 A suicide bomber kills 41 in a mosque in NW Pakistan during Eid prayers.

Dec 27 Bhutto is killed in a gun and bomb attack after a rally in Rawalpindi. At least 16 others killed

Dec 31 Violence flares as supporters of Bhutto take to the streets. The death toll of people killed in riots hits 47

Jan 7, 2008 Al Qaeda-linked militants in northwest Pakistan attack govt-sponsored peace movement, kill 8

Jan 10 A suicide bomber walks up to policemen stationed outside the High Court in Lahore and set off explosives. 19, including 16 policemen and 3 passers-by, killed

Jan 14 Nine people are killed in a bomb attack in a low-income area of Karachi

Jan 17 A teenager blows himself up in a Shi’ite Muslim prayer hall in Peshawar. At least nine people are killed, 25 wounded