The bomb left a vast crater some 30 feet deep in front of the main building, where rescuers ferried a stream of bloodied bodies. The fire was still burning at 2 a.m., six hours after the blast. It spread from the front to the back, gutting most of the building and sending up a thick pall of smoke over the area.
Witnesses and officials said a large truck rammed two heavy metal barriers blocking the hotel entrance around 8 p.m., when four restaurants inside would have been packed with diners at the hour that Muslims break their daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan. The five-story Marriott had been a favorite place for foreigners, as well as Pakistani politicians and business people, to stay and socialize in Islamabad despite repeated militant attacks on the hotel. One American was confirmed dead.
The bombing occurred hours after President Asif Ali Zardari made his first address to Parliament, less than a mile away from the hotel, and days ahead of the new leader's meeting with President Bush on Tuesday in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
Rehman Malik, head of Pakistan's Interior Ministry, said authorities had received intelligence that there might be militant activity timed to coincide with Zardari's inaugural address and security had been tightened.
After the attack, Zardari pledged to rid his country of the "cancer" of terrorism. In a brief statement broadcast on national television, he sent condolences to the victims and said he understood their pain because of the assassination of his wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
He appealed to Pakistan's democratic forces to unite to defeat terrorism but did not indicate who might have been behind the attack. Pakistani officials, however, say Taliban and Al Qaeda militants based in the northwest of the country work closely together.
A US State Department official led three colleagues through the rubble from the charred building, one of them bleeding heavily from a wound on the side of his head.
One of the four, who identified himself only as Tony, said they had been moving toward the rear of a Chinese restaurant inside the hotel after a first, small blast when a second explosion hurled them against the back wall.
