(AKI) - Denmark called an emergency cabinet meeting on Monday after a suicide car bombing outside its embassy in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. At least eight people died and around 30 others were injured in the blast, which damaged the embassy and left a huge crater in the road outside the building. Danish media reports said a Pakistani cleaner at the embassy died and three other Pakistani employees were wounded.
| No Danes were injured in the attack, the Danish foreign ministry said. But it issued a warning to its citizens against travelling to Pakistan. |
Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, blamed the attack on 'dark forces' that want to destroy Pakistan's relationship with others. "We will not give them that victory," he said at a media conference in Copenhagen. He said the relationship between the Danish and Pakistani governments remained strong and that the bombing was also an attack against Pakistan's government. The minister said that both governments were working together to find out who was responsible for the attack. "It is terrible that terrorists commit such acts," he said.
Denmark had downgraded the embassy and transferred many of its staff in recent months, after threats arising from the reprinting of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Danish media The attack on the Danish embassy also damaged the nearby home of the Australian defence attache, but the Australian government says no one there was hurt