While Al Qaeda had claimed the responsibility for the blast outside the Danish Embassy in Islamabad on June3, 2008, it did not in respect of the other strikes mentioned by Amir Mir. Al Qaeda targeted the Danish Embassy in protest against the cartoons on the Holy Prophet carried by the Danish media. It continues to call for more attacks on Danish targets.
After the controversy over the cartoons broke out two years ago, Denmark had drastically reduced the strength of its home-based staff in its Embassy in Islamabad. It was running a truncated mission with the help of either Pakistani recruits or Danish citizens of Pakistani origin. However, it is learnt that it was having a small office in the Marriott Hotel, which was staffed by officers of the Danish intelligence agency responsible for counter-terrorism. They were monitoring the developments relating to terrorism in Pakistan and maintaining a liaison with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The information about the presence of a small cell of the Danish intelligence in the hotel seems to have leaked out to AlQaeda.
The official figures of fatalities in the blast are 53. Of these, one has been described as a Danish citizen. Another Danish citizen is stated to be missing. An Agence France Press (AFP) report from Copenhagen says as follows: "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 on 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. "Several other Danes were in the hotel, they have been slightly hurt" in the explosion, Holm said, adding that these people, three in number, were all employed by the Danish Embassy in Islamabad. Saturday's suicide blast was "an attack on cooperation between Pakistan and the international community, because these Islamists, these fanatics, want to break relations between the West and the democratically-elected Pakistani Government," he added.
Media reports have quoted Lou Fintor, a spokesman of the US Embassy in Islamabad, as saying that there was no evidence that Americans were thetarget. However, two US Defense Department employees were among the dead and a third American—a State Department contractor—was missing. Three U.S. Embassy employees and an embassy contractor were injured, Fintor said.