By Alamgir Bitani
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Militants attacked a hotel popular with VIPs and foreigners in the Pakistani city of Peshawar with guns and a truck bomb on Tuesday, killing five people including a U.N. worker, authorities said.
Taliban militants have stepped up bomb attacks since the military launched an offensive in April in the former tourist valley of Swat and neighbouring districts northwest of the capital.
Militants shot their way through a security post at the gate of the Pearl Continental Hotel in the northwestern city of Peshawar and a suspected suicide bomber set off the truck bomb in front of the lobby, security officials said.
The hotel's windows were shattered and much of the front of the building was destroyed. Police said the bomb contained 500 kg (1,100 lb) of explosives, similar size to a suicide truck bomb at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad last year that killed 55 people.
"I was in the Chinese restaurant when we heard firing and then a blast. It was totally dark and people started shouting and running," hotel waiter Ali Khan told Reuters.
Top city administrator Sahibzada Anis said five people had been killed, among them a U.N. refugee agency worker. Police said the man was Serbian.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack.
"Once again, a dedicated staff member of the United Nations is among the victims of a heinous terrorist attack which no cause can justify," Ban's press office said in a statement.
About 70 people were wounded, among them a German woman working for the U.N. children's fund, a British man and a Nigerian man, Anis said.
About a dozen U.N. staff were staying at the hotel.
The United Nations is heavily involved in providing relief for more than 2.5 million people displaced by the fighting in Swat and elsewhere in the northwest.
There was no claim of responsibility for the latest attack, but the Taliban have warned of retaliatory action over the Swat offensive.
WASHINGTON HEARTENED
The United States, which needs sustained Pakistani action to help defeat al Qaeda and cut off militant support for the Afghan Taliban, has been heartened by the resolve the government and military are showing in Swat.
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said on Monday Pakistan's army was gaining in the offensive because public support for the operation was solidifying.
"For the first time, the Pakistan army operations in that part of the world have support of the government and the public. This is really different from the past, when the army went up and there was little backing," Blair told intelligence officials in Washington.
Earlier on Tuesday, the army came to the help of a pro-government militia fighting the Taliban in a northwestern district after outrage over a suspected Taliban bomb attack at a mosque last week that killed about 40 people.
The villagers' action is the latest in a series of examples of people turning on the Taliban in recent weeks, underscoring the shift in public opinion away from the Islamists.
The military says troops have cleared most of Swat, but soldiers are encountering pockets of resistance. The army said on Tuesday that 14 militants and one soldier had been killed in the previous 24 hours.
In all, the army says more than 1,300 militants and 105 soldiers have been killed. There has been no independent confirmation of the figures.
U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke also said on Monday that Pakistani public opinion was increasingly on the government's side, and he renewed calls for other Western countries to provide more aid for the displaced.
(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider, Faris Ali, Aizaz Mohmand; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by David Fox)
