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Suicide Bike Bomber Kills Workers Outside a Pakistan bank And Hotel In Garrison City of RawalpindiBy ugeshji, Section Suicide Bombers
A BOMB blast outside a Pakistan bank and hotel in the garrison city of Rawalpindi has killed at least 34 people.
A spokeswoman for the rescue services says another 32 were wounded in the attack. A suicide bomber on a motorcycle ripped through workers queuing for their salaries nearthe four-star Shalimar Hotel, killing 20 people as the United Nations pulled expatriate staff from the country's north-west.  ''We were sitting on the second floor of our office. It was a huge blast,'' Raja Sher Ali, a marketing manager in a local company, said. ''Our building shook as if in an earthquake and when we came out there was smoke everywhere and body parts were thrown into our office.'' A surge in militant attacks left more than 300 people dead last month as the military pressed its offensive against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan movement in the tribal belt, where there are many al-Qaeda-linked operatives. A senior police official said the suicide bomber drove a motorcycle towards the queue of people waiting for their salaries when he blew up. Source: www.theage.com Suicide bike bomber kills workers Click On "Full Story" For More...
''The suicide bomber came on a motorcycle and blew up close to people gathered to get salaries,'' senior police official Aslam Tarin told reporters. ''We found parts of a suicide vest and some body parts of the suicide attacker.''
The attack took place at Mall Road, close to the upmarket Pearl Continental Hotel, not far from Pakistan's army headquarters, where 10 gunmen kept up a nearly 24-hour siege last month, and about 15 minutes' drive from the airport. With deteriorating security in the country, the UN announced yesterday that it was pulling international staff from north-west Pakistan, just days after at least 118 people were slaughtered by a car bomb in its capital Peshawar. ''They will be relocated immediately,'' Ishrat Rizvi, a UN spokeswoman, said. She was unable to say immediately how many staff the decision would affect. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared that the world body had increased its security level to ''phase four'' in the North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a UN statement said. ''The decision has been taken bearing in mind the intense security situation in the region,'' the statement said. Stepping up its assault on the Taliban, Pakistan yesterday offered rewards totalling $US5 million ($A5.57 million) for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of the country's Taliban warlord, Hakimullah Mehsud, and 18 of his lieutenants. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has been blamed for some of the worst attacks in Pakistan, which have killed about 2400 people in a wave of carnage in the past two years. A newspaper advertisement offering rewards for the group's leaders said: ''These people certainly need just punishment. They are the killers of humanity. Help the government of Pakistan to annihilate them.''
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