A Pakistan official has said that Islamist militants are most likely behind yesterday’s car bomb that left 18 people dead.
Pakistani police are still pulling bodies from the rubble of a luxury hotel in Peshawar, the site of the attack.
North West Frontier Province information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said the blast at the Pearl Continental Hotel yesterday was likely a revenge attack by Islamist militants over a six-week offensive against them in the northwest.
Large parts of the hotel were reduced to rubble when at least two attackers shot security guards and then slammed an explosives-laden truck into the building.
Police say 57 people were injured, including a number of foreigners who have been taken to Islamabad for treatment.
The UN said the dead included two of their employees who worked for children's agency UNICEF.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the bombing a ‘heinous terrorist attack which no cause can justify’.
Dozens of aid workers were staying at the hotel before heading out to refugee camps in North West Frontier Province.
The air and ground assault in Swat, Lower Dir and Buner has sent up to two million people fleeing their homes.
More than 155 people have been killed in similar attacks across Pakistan since the anti-Taliban military offensive began, and Tuesday's bombing was the seventh deadly blast in Peshawar in a month.
