Luxury Hotel Building in Gwadar Badly Damaged in Terrorist Attack: Report

Karachi: The building of the luxury Pearl Continental Hotel in the southwestern port city of Gwadar has been badly damaged due to explosions and rocket fire during the terror attack on Saturday, Pakistani media reported Monday.

Five people including a soldier were killed after gunmen stormed the five-star hotel in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province.

The attack on Pearl Continental in the strategic port city of Gwadar left four hotel employees and a Pakistan Navy soldier dead on Saturday. Six others were injured, including two army captains, two navy soldiers and two hotel employees, the Pakistan military said Sunday.

The separatist Balochistan Liberation Army said it carried out the attack.

"The fourth floor of the hotel has been destroyed as the attackers had planted improvised explosive devices at its entry points and also fired rockets," Dawn newspaper quoted security officials as saying.

The ground floor and the other three floors had also been damaged in the encounter between security forces and the attackers, the report quoted the officials as saying.

Meanwhile, security at the port city has been increased and special arrangements have been made to protect the employees of the Chinese Port Handling Company and others who are working on different projects under the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the report said.

Gwadar is a strategic port on the Arabian Sea that is being developed by China as part of the CPEC.

The security authorities and local administration have deployed more personnel of police, anti-terrorist force and Frontier Corps at various places in Gwadar.

The roads leading to Gwadar port and other important places are still sealed and nobody is allowed to use them, the report said.

The separatist group said that the hotel, the centrepiece of a multi-billion-dollar Chinese project, was selected in order to target Chinese and other investors.

Militants in resource-rich Balochistan oppose Chinese investment, saying it is of little benefit to local people.