6 injured in Islamabad hotel blast

Explosion in a four-storey hotel in Islamabad injured at least six people and destroyed one storey of the hotel building. The blast happened at 11 p.m. in the Citi Hotel in the Blue Area where a lot of shops and restaurants are located. A gas cylinder exploded on the top floor of a Pakistani hotel in Islamabad late Thursday, injuring three women and a child in a city always on guard against feared terror attacks, police said. The explosion was in the vicinity of the venue where Pakistani political and military leadership were meeting in rare cross-party talks designed to close ranks against US pressure for action against the al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network. Meanwhile, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Pakistan would not be pressured into doing more in the war on terror after stinging US rebukes accused Pakistan of involvement in recent attacks on the US embassy in Kabul and a NATO base in Afghanistan and demands that the government cut ties with the Haqqanis. Islamabad is the most heavily protected city in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed Muslim state where routine suicide and bomb attacks largely concentrated in the northwest are blamed on local Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants. Although bombings have targeted embassies, hotels and restaurants in the past, June saw the capital's first suicide attack in nearly two years when a bomber blew himself up in a bank killing a security guard.