Word: peshawar
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Zubair Khan realizes his good fortune. When armed gunmen riding in a pick-up truck laden with 500kg explosives attacked Peshawar's landmark Pearl Continental Hotel on the night of June 9, killing at least 9 people and injuring dozens, he only suffered injuries from flying shards of glass. If Khan had been sitting just 20 feet closer to the edge of the roof, where he and others were dining when the attack took place, he may not have survived. (See pictures of the hotel blast...
...According to Mohammed Ali, a Peshawar policeman on the scene, the driver "drove speedily to the left side of the hotel, where there was a car park near the kitchen and the laundry. He stopped there and blew up the vehicle." The attackers' vehicle was vaporized, he adds. In scenes that revive grim memories of last September's attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad (the hotels have the same owner), nearby cars have been crushed and mangled. Then as now, the final moments before the bombing are revealed in CCTV footage shot by cameras mounted around the hotel compound...
...Like the Marriott, "the PC", as it popularly known, was a choice haunt for politicians, aid workers, and journalists. In the opening days of the war in Afghanistan, many rooms were occupied by western media organizations. At the time, the discreetly located bar - Peshawar's only one - was still open. Some fixtures endured the city's slide in security over recent years as militants have increasingly menaced this bustling northwest city of three million. Spies skulked in the lobby, assiduously rereading newspapers. And there was still "Taipan", the Chinese-ish restaurant looking out at the pool. Half-eaten plates, half...
Last month, the cities of Lahore and Peshawar were rocked by massive blasts on successive days. The attack on Lahore targeted the office of the city's police chief and the regional headquarters of Pakistan's main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, commonly known as the ISI. At least two dozen people were killed by the blast that caused widespread damage and injured over 300. The Taliban later claimed responsibility. Hakimullah Mehsud, a deputy of notorious Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, warned the residents of major cities to flee before they struck again...
Meanwhile, on the streets of the Afghan capital Kabul and the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar, cheap, mass-produced DVDs feature footage of coalition atrocities: mud-brick Afghan villages leveled by allied attacks and ordinary citizens allegedly killed by coalition fire. Also popular: a montage from the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, part of a running effort to portray the current foreign troops as "invaders." Other discs show Taliban executions of so-called traitors and spectacular attacks against coalition forces...