Islamabad Blast Injures Pakistan Airline Passengers

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 blast struck the Citi Hotel in the Blue Area, the Pakistani capital's ordinarily bustling district of shops and restaurants around 11 pm (1800 GMT) at a time when people still linger over dinner in the cool breeze of evening.

"It appears to be a gas cylinder blast," city police chief Bani Amin told reporters. "It does not appear to be explosives," he added.

He said four passengers whose Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight was delayed and who were staying in the hotel were injured.

"They were staying in a room," Amin added.

Another police official said three women and a child were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

An Agence France Presse correspondent saw shattered windows at the scene of the hotel, where water was flowing from the top floor.

Thursday's blast struck as the country's political and military leadership were locked in rare cross-party talks designed to close ranks against U.S. pressure for action against the Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Pakistan would not be pressured into doing more in the war on terror after stinging U.S. rebukes accused Pakistan of involvement in recent attacks on the U.S. 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.

Earlier this year, minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti and liberal politician Salman Taseer were shot dead in Islamabad in separate assassinations motivated by their opposition to controversial blasphemy laws.