At least 11 people were killed last night and 70 injured when suspected Islamic militants stormed a five-star hotel frequented by aid workers in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.Officials said that two foreigners were among the dead and an unidentified British man working for the United Nations’ refugee agency was one of six foreigners injured.

It was the latest in a series of attacks on Pakistani cities that officials say are revenge for a military offensive against the Taliban in the northwestern region of Swat.

The militants drove through the main gate of the Pearl Continental Hotel in a pick-up truck, spraying security guards with bullets before ramming their vehicle into the building and detonating it. “It was a suicide attack,” Sefwat Ghayur, the city police chief, said.

Police said that the vehicle had been able to bypass security because it appeared to be delivering hotel supplies. Abdul Ghafoor Afridi, a police official, said that there were at least two attackers, and they were wearing security guard uniforms. Witnesses described a large explosion followed by a fire that gutted the hotel, leaving a deep crater outside the four-storey building in the high-security Khyber Road area.

Television footage showed ambulances and police cars outside the hotel, which is popular with politicians, officials and business people, as well as foreign aid workers, journalists and diplomats. US officials said the State Department had planned to buy or lease offices in the hotel for a new American consulate in Peshawar.

One of the injured foreigners worked for the United Nations’ children’s agency, according to a hospital official. The UNHCR said its Serbian computer specialist, Aleksandar Vorkapic, 44. was among the dead.

Police estimated that more than 500kg of explosive material was used in the bomb. Rows of balconies appeared to have been ripped off the face of the hotel. A clutch of UN vehicles were among dozens of charred cars parked outside.

Hotel guests stumbled among twisted metal, with rubble strewn among the manicured lawns overlooking the historic Bala Hisar Fort and the Peshawar golf course.

Ghulam Ahmed, a hotel employee, described the explosion. “I was sitting in the eastern side of the hotel building and suddenly there was a huge blast which tumbled my chair and I fell on the ground. As I rose from the ground I saw flames and smoke,” he said.

The attack echoed a similar suicide bombing on the luxury Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the capital, in September last year. Sixty people died then.

Yesterday’s suicide bombing was the seventh deadly attack in Peshawar, capital of North West Frontier Province, in a month and one of more than a dozen that the Taleban have carried out since the Pakistani Army launched an offensive in Swat and neighboring districts in April.

Pakistani troops, backed by two helicopters, came to the help of a pro-government militia fighting the Taliban in a northwestern district yesterday, killing about 25 militants. Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said on Monday that public opinion was increasingly on the Pakistani Government’s side.

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