Car Bomb Hits Danish Mission In Islamabad

Attack in Capital of Pakistan Leaves as Many as Eight Dead

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 2 -- As many as eight people were killed and 24 injured Monday in Pakistan's capital when a powerful car bomb ripped through the Danish Embassy.

The explosion occurred in the heart of one of the most closely guarded areas of the city, and could be heard from nearly a mile away. A six-foot-wide crater was left in the road about 12 feet from the embassy gates, where a car packed with an estimated 44 pounds of explosives stopped before the blast occurred, officials said.

The bombing was the first in Islamabad in a little more than two months, and the second this year to target foreigners living and working in the Pakistani capital. Pakistan has been racked by political unrest and violence since early last year, but attacks have intensified considerably since the country's former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated Dec. 27. More than 150 people have been killed in violence since parliamentary elections Feb. 18.

Most of the embassy's foreign workers had moved out of the building following a decision by Danish newspapers in February to republish a controversial cartoon showing the Islamic prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb as a turban. The incident unleashed a furor throughout the Islamic world, and Danish diplomatic missions have been on high alert ever since. The Danish newspapers reprinted the cartoon after police arrested three men linked to a plot to assassinate Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who authored the work.

The cartoon, which was first published in September 2005 in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten along with 11 other cartoons, provoked waves of violent protests worldwide that resulted in at least 100 deaths. Crowds of demonstrators set fire to Danish Embassy buildings in Syria, Iran and Lebanon.

There were conflicting reports on the number of casualties in Monday's attack. Pakistani authorities said six people were killed, including two police officers. But paramedics who arrived at the scene minutes after the blast said eight people had been killed.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller told the Associated Press that Monday's explosion killed a Pakistani custodian, seriously injured a handyman and hurt two other workers.

"It is terrible that terrorists do this. The embassy is there to have a cooperation between the Pakistani population and Denmark, and that means they are destroying that," Moeller said in comments on Danish television reported by the wire service.

Dozens of cars parked in front of a U.N. mission building across from the embassy were charred and overturned in a gnarled heap. Several other neighboring buildings were also damaged.

Debris from the bombing was scattered around the site for several hundred yards. The engine of the car apparently used in the attack was tossed about 50 yards before landing next to the body of a passerby who was killed in the blast.

Anwar Butt, a manager with a branch of the U.N. Development Program, said he was in his office on the second floor of the U.N. building with more than 20 of his colleagues when he heard the deafening blast. Windows shattered, forcing shards of glass into his head and back.

"I was sitting in my office at my desk. Suddenly we heard a blast," Butt said. "Thank God my desk is safe with my back to the windows, otherwise I might have been killed."