BACKGROUND: Terrorist attacks in Pakistan

Oct 10, 2008, 19:55 GMT

Hamburg - There have been a number of deadly terrorist attacks in Pakistan over the last few months. Most were suicide attacks:

September 20, 2008: In a car bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in the centre of the capital Islamabad, 53 people were killed and 260 injured, according to government sources. Among the dead were the Czech ambassador and other foreigners. The radical Islamist group Fedayin-e-Islam claimed responsibility for the suicide attack. The group has contacts with the group Tehrik-e-Taliban, the Pakistani branch of the formerly Afghan-based Islamist extremist Taliban.

August 21 2008: In north-western Pakistan three suicide bombers killed at least 78 people in the city of Wah. Some 100 people were injured in the explosion outside of a weapons factory. Tehrik-e- Taliban claimed responsibility.

August 19, 2008: At least 23 people were killed and 20 injured in an attack on a hospital in the North-West Frontier Province. Police said the suicide bomber blew up among a crowd outside the hospital's emergency room in the city of Dera Ismail Khan.

June 2, 2008: A car bomb attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad left at least six people dead, Pakistani government sources said. The al-Qaeda terrorist network claimed responsibility, seeking revenge for the publication of 'insulting caricatures' of Islam's prophet Mohammed.

March 11, 2008: In two suicide attacks in the eastern city of Lahore, at least 27 people were killed and 200 injured. The first attack struck the regional headquarters of the Pakistani federal justice ministry. The second attack took place in an advertising agency near the residence of Asif Ali Zardar, the leader of the Pakistani People's Party (PPP) and the widower of murdered former premier Benazir Bhutto.

March 2, 2008: Around 40 people were killed and many more seriously injured in a suicide attack in the country's north-west. The attacker detonated the bomb during a tribal assembly of around 1,000 participants in the city of Darra Adam Khel. Tribal leaders had called the assembly to discuss combatting Islamist extremists.

February 16, 2008: Forty-seven people were killed and around 150 injured in an attack on an office of an independent political candidate for parliament ahead of elections scheduled for two days later. The suicide bomber drove a car bomb in the election office in Parachinar on the border with Afghanistan.

December 27, 2007: Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is murdered in a bombing in Rawalpindi. Twenty other people died along with the politician, who was twice prime minister. The interior Ministry blamed the attack on extremists connected with al-Qaeda. The terrorist network however denied complicity in the incident.