Four held in connection with Pakistan hotel blast

Fifty-five people were killed when a truck loaded with explosives blew up outside the hotel in the heart of the capital on September 20.

Police said earlier the four men had been arrested at different times in different places.

"The court has given us a seven-day remand for these men and we will continue our investigation," said senior police official Altaf Ali Khattak.

Khattak said the four men, one of them a doctor and another a lawyer, were being held under various sections of the penal code and the anti-terror act. They have yet to be formally charged.

The suspects were brought to court in the city of Rawalpindi, adjacent to Islamabad, under tight security. They were handcuffed and chained to policemen and their faces were covered with hoods.

Islamist militants are suspected of organising the attack on the hotel.

Pakistan has been hit by a wave of suicide bomb attacks, many of them on the security forces and politicians, since last year.

Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was killed in a suicide gun and bomb attack in Rawalpindi in December. Authorities suspect a Pakistani Taliban leader based in a remote region on the Afghan border was behind that attack.

(Reporting by Aftab Borka; Editing by Robert Birsel and Sanjeev Miglani)