The explosion at restaurant ‘Luna Caprese’, located in a posh area of the Pakistani capital, was blamed on militants who have been targeting Westerners and Pakistani Christians they view supportive to the US-led war on terror.
A doctor at Islamibad’s Polyclinic and Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), where most casualties were brought, identified one of the killed persons as a Turkish woman, Indra Basker, who worked as a nurse at the United States Embassy in Islamabad. The second person, who apparently died later, was not immediately identified.
Most of the injured survivors apparently sustained their wounds due to shards of glass. The injured included five American diplomats, one Japanese, one British, one Chinese and one Canadian national. Four of the injured were said to be in critical condition at PIMS. British diplomat Tricia Gibbs was among those in critical condition, officials said.
BLOCKING MEDIA
Soon after the attack, police and other law enforcement agencies cordoned off the blast site and blocked media from entering the area.
Police Inspector General Shahid Nadeem Baloch told BosNewsLife that the blast "was not a suicide attack." A source close to the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bomb, containing four kilograms of the chemical explosive TNT, was placed beneath one of the tables of a backyard dinning area.
It was not immediately clear whether the bomb was operated by a remote control device.
HUGE EXPLOSION
The explosion left a two feet deep ditch at the blast site and could be felt within the radius of about two kilometers (1.2 miles), witnesses said. One eye witness, who only identified himself as Anwar, told BosNewsLife that the bomb exploded at 8:40 in the evening local time. He said that at the time of blast there were 42 individuals at the restaurant including 22 staff members of the Luna Caprese Restaurant.
President Pervez Musharraf has strongly condemned the attack and pledged to crackdown "on terrorism". He ordered a "thorough probe" into the latest explosion. The chairman of advocacy group Rays Of Developments condemned the attack, saying it could be a result
Chairman ROD, Ferhan Mazher condemned the bomb attack, saying the blast may be a fallout of Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Several media recently republished the controversial caricatures after one of the cartoonists received death threats. They have argued that Islamic militants should not be allowed to influence freedom of expression.
Christians in Pakistan have expressed concerns about growing Islamic extremism in Pakistan. Extremists’ bomb attacks have escalated in Pakistan since last July, when the government fought a week-long battle with Islamic militant guerrillas at the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in the city, observers say. Over 2,000 people were killed in extremist attacks in 2007. In the first 10 weeks of this year, 11 of 16 suicide attacks reportedly targeted military personnel or police, but churches have also seen violence. (Read more from Jawad Mazhar via www.raysofdevelopment.org).
