However, no militant group has so far claimed the responsibility. The owner of the hotel accused security forces of a serious lapse in allowing a mini truck to approach the hotel unchallenged and not shooting the driver before he could trigger the explosives. "If I were there and had seen the suicide bomber, I would have killed him. Unfortunately, they didn't," Sadruddin Hashwani was quoted as saying by TV channels and foreign news agencies on Sunday.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the bomber attacked the hotel only after tight security prevented him from reaching Parliament or the Prime Minister's office, where the President and many government dignitaries had gathered for Iftar dinner. The investigation into the incident has been started amid reports that US investigation team has also arrived in the federal capital. However, the interior ministry is neither confirming nor rejecting the arrival of US team.
Rescue teams searched the blackened hotel room by room on Sunday, but the temperature remained high as fire was still being put out in some parts. Some rescue workers feared that the hotel's main building would collapse. However, the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) will give final orders whether the building would collapse or is out of danger. The PEC authorities and Pakistan Army Engineering Corps are evaluating the condition of the building.
Khalid Hussain Abbasi, a rescue official, confirmed that six new bodies had been found, but would not say if the dead were foreigners. He said he expected more charred remains to be discovered. The attack drew condemnations from around the world, including the United States, which has pressured Pakistan to do more to wipe out militant hideouts on its side of the Afghan border.
There are fears that blast could force the diplomatic missions, the UN offices and aid groups in Islamabad to re-evaluate whether nonessential staff and family members should stay in Pakistan. The UN officials have already held a meeting on the issue. But the world body is yet to make its decision public.
The federal government has issued orders on Sunday for tightening the security of diplomatic staff and the citizens of Britain and America across the country. AFP adds: Meanwhile, Czech Foreign Minister Karel Scvhwarzenberg vigorously denounced the attack, which cost the life of the recently appointed diplomat Ivo Zdarek.
"His death shows that the terrorists are trying to hit our most vulnerable spots. We will not waver from our path: we will always stand up to evil and combat evil," he said. He also denounced the attack as an attempt to destabilise Pakistan in a crucial period after recent presidential elections.
Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said Zdarek's body would likely be repatriated on Monday, and "if that is not the case, we will send a special aircraft to Islamabad" to retrieve it.
He condemned the attack and warned of "fundamentalism". "If fundamentalism imposes itself in Pakistan, the entire region will be destabilised, and that will have an impact also on the Czech Republic," he said on Czech television. Earlier the Czech embassy's number two Jarolav Kalfirt told AFP in Islamabad that Zdarek had called his embassy after Saturday night's bombing from inside the hotel asking to be rescued.
The 47-year-old father of two, who had been named as the Czech ambassador to Pakistan in August, had been living alone at the Marriott since his arrival last month, Czech foreign ministry spokeswoman Zuzana Opletalova said. No other Czech nationals are reported as missing following the blast, the ministry said.
A graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Zdarek previously held senior diplomatic posts in China and Vietnam. He served as consul general in Shanghai from 1995 to 1999, before becoming ambassador to Vietnam in Hanoi from 2004 to August 2008, according to his biography on the foreign ministry's website.
A Danish intelligence agent is missing after Saturday's devastating suicide bomb attack on the Marriott hotel in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, Denmark's foreign minister said Sunday. "We are talking about a member of the intelligence services stationed at the embassy in Islamabad, with no sign of life," Per Stig Moeller told TV2 news channel.
"What we have heard is that a Dane likely figures among the dead. If that proves to be the case, it would be profoundly tragic," he added, because he had been sent to Pakistan to improve security for Danish staff there. The Danish intelligence agency, PET, said in a separate statement that one of its agents, a security advisor, had been posted missing, presumed dead. A second PET official was unhurt, it said.
Earlier, the foreign ministry's head of diplomacy Klavs Holm told AFP that teams were scouring the city's hospitals and other places looking for the missing national. Other Danish nationals had been in the Mariott at the time of the attack and three of them, who all work at Islamabad's Danish embassy, sustained "minor injuries", he added. He could not confirm a report on Pakistani television, cited by the Danish news agency Ritzau, that a Danish diplomat had been killed.
Reuters adds: Two members of the US armed forces were killed in the suicide bomb attack that killed more than 50 people at the Marriott Hotel, the Defence Department said on Sunday. The two, assigned to the US Embassy in Islamabad, died from wounds received in the Saturday bombing, the department said in a statement. It said the names of the two were being withheld until their families were notified.