Deadly Blast At Restaurant In Pakistan’s Capital

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An explosion at a restaurant frequented by foreigners here in the Pakistani capital on Saturday night killed at least one person and wounded 11 others, including five Americans, the police said.

The restaurant, Luna Caprese, in a popular shopping area and one of the few places in the capital that serves alcohol, was packed with foreigners when the bomb exploded shortly after 8:30 p.m. at the peak of the dining hour. The police said the bomb went off in the garden where patrons were dining in warm spring weather.

A Turkish woman was killed, the police said, and the wounded included a Japanese, a Canadian, a Briton and three Pakistanis, according to the hospital where they were taken.

The attack, the first aimed at the international community in Pakistan in more than a year, occurred after more than a dozen suicide bombings against Pakistani government security installations in the last three months. The increase in suicide bombings, particularly in the major cities, is an indication of the sharply escalating insurgency by Al Qaeda and the Taliban against the Pakistani state, Western and Pakistani officials say.

Diplomats and foreign workers in the capital had been increasingly concerned that they would become targets after two suicide bombers killed 25 people in Lahore on Tuesday at the headquarters of the Federal Investigative Agency and another security service building.

A meeting of security officials from foreign embassies had concluded that an attack on foreigners in the capital was imminent, a Western ambassador said Saturday night. “The threshold of risk for foreigners was up,” the ambassador said.

The inspector general of the Islamabad police, Shahid Nadeem Baloch, said five Americans were among the injured.

A spokeswoman for the United States Embassy confirmed that Americans were among those injured. “We are still accounting for our people,” said the spokeswoman, Kay Mayfield.

It was not clear whether the Americans were employees of the embassy, she said. Two United States Embassy vehicles were in the parking lot of the restaurant at the time of the blast.

No details were available on the condition of the injured Americans, she said. All five were being operated on at the Poly Clinic hospital.

A Pakistani security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was too early to tell which extremist group was involved.

The government of President Pervez Musharraf has consistently blamed a Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, for the attacks of the last several months, including the one that killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27.

The blast came two days before the new government formed by two opposition parties elected last month is to take its seats in the Parliament.

A shopkeeper, Shahid Mehood, who rushed to the restaurant from his shop across the street, said he pulled six injured people from the restaurant. “The explosion shook the whole area,” he said.

A waiter at the restaurant, Mazhar Iqbal, said American and Chinese patrons were sitting in the back garden.

The structure of the two-story house where the restaurant operated seemed relatively unscathed. The neon light with the name of the restaurant remained intact, but furniture in the garden was blown to pieces.

The leader of the second largest party, Pakistan Muslim League-N, Nawaz Sharif, said through a spokesman that the attack was directly tied to the rule of Mr. Musharraf whose political party suffered severe losses.

“This is a very tragic incident which is an unprecedented phenomenon, never seen in the past history of Pakistan,” the spokesman, Khawaja Imran Raza, said. “It is very sad such incidents are becoming the order of the day during the Musharraf era.”

A spokesman for Mr. Musharraf said the bombing was a warning to the incoming government. The message of the militants was “we will continue this unless you come to talk to us,” said Gen. Rashid Qureshi.

Tag Cloud

External Information

Additional Information

Where Am I?