Pictured: At least 40 people killed as fire sweeps through Marriott hotel in Pakistan after suicide car bomb

A car bomb has exploded outside the Marriott in the Pakistani capital Islamabad killing at least 40 people and starting a fire which swept through the hotel.

The explosion happened hours after new President Asif Ali Zardari, widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, made his first address to a joint sitting of parliament.

"A car laden with explosives rammed the gate at the Marriott and so far we have brought out 40 dead bodies, but the number could well be higher," police chief Asghar Raza Gardazi said.

Television pictures showed flames and smoke pouring out of the 290-room hotel, located close to the city centre and popular with tourists. A senior official said it appeared to have been a suicide attack.

The blast brought down the ceiling in a banquet room where there were about 200 to 300 people at a meal to break the fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

Imtiaz Gul, a journalist, was among them.

"We just ran for cover, I could see a lot of injured people lying around me," Gul said.
Zardari has pledged to fight Islamist militants who have been blamed for a string of bomb attacks in the country.

But he told parliament that Pakistan would not tolerate any infringement of its territory in the name of the fight against militants. A series of U.S. strikes on militants along the Pakistan-Afghan border have infuriated many Pakistanis.

Zardari won a presidential election this month to replace U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf, who stepped down in August under threat of impeachment.

The United States and Afghanistan say al Qaeda and Taliban militants operate out of bases in remote ethnic Pashtun lands on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border.

The blast outside the Marriott was the biggest to hit Islamabad and destroyed dozens of cars outside and shattered windows and damaged buildings hundreds of metres away. The Marriott chain has its headquarters in the United States.


Police at the scene said people were still trapped inside. A crane was brought in to try to get people out.

There was a large crater in the road by the hotel's heavy security barriers. The street was littered with debris and broken branches from roadside trees and acrid smoke drifted in the air.

The hotel has been bombed twice before but the Saturday evening blast was the most serious in the Pakistani capital since the country joined the U.S.-led campaign against militancy in late 2001.

Al Qaeda-linked militants based in sanctuaries in the Afghan border have launched a bloody campaign of bomb attacks in retaliation for offensives by the security forces.