Truck bomber kills at least 43 at Islamabad hotel

By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A suicide truck bomber attacked the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Saturday, killing at least 43 people, wounding nearly 250 and starting a fire that swept through the building in the Pakistani capital.

Internal security in nuclear-armed Pakistan, a country vital to the war against al Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups, has deteriorated at an alarming rate over the past two years.

The bombing bore the signs of an attack by al Qaeda or an affiliate, a U.S. intelligence official said.

It came hours after new President Asif Ali Zardari, widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, made his first address to parliament a few hundred meters away, calling for terrorism to be rooted out.

As flames engulfed the tightly guarded hotel, part of a U.S.-based chain and popular with foreigners, diplomats and rich Pakistanis, police said there were still people trapped inside.

Zardari made a televised address to the nation on Sunday and said the bombing was cowardly.

"This is an epidemic, a cancer in Pakistan which we will root out," he said. "We will not be afraid of these cowards."

Pakistan's army is in the midst of a major offensive against al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border, while the U.S. military has intensified attacks on militants on the Pakistani side of the border, infuriating many Pakistanis.

Militants have launched bomb attacks, most on security forces in the northwest, in retaliation for the strikes on them.

"They're giving a very clear, unambiguous message that if the government pursues these policies, this is what (they) will do in response," Talat Masood, a retired general and defense analyst, said of the attack.

"They are saying 'we can strike anywhere, at any time regardless of how good you think your security is'," he said.

An al Qaeda video, released to mark the seventh anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, included a call for militants in Pakistan to step up their fight.

"You must stand with your Mujahideen brothers in Afghanistan and ... strike the interests of Crusader (Western) allies in Pakistan," Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, an al Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, said on the tape.

20-FOOT CRATER

Saturday's attack was the worst yet in the capital. It came six months after a civilian government took power and a month after it forced former army chief and firm U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf to step down as president.