Foreigners under threat after Pak restaurant blast

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ISLAMABAD, Mar 16 (AFP): Islamist militants behind a wave of recent attacks in Pakistan have changed tactics to target foreigners, officials said Sunday, after a bomb at an Islamabad restaurant killed a Turkish woman.
The Turkish aid worker died and at least 10 other foreigners were wounded, including several US diplomats, in the blast at the popular Luna Caprese Italian eatery in Islamabad Saturday evening.
Violence linked to Al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents has left at least 600 people dead since the start of the year and posed a major challenge to the country's incoming government after last month's elections.
"This was the first attack in which foreigners have been targeted in Islamabad since 2002 and it shows a new trend," a top security official told the news agency on condition of anonymity.
A suicide attacker armed with grenades stormed into a church in Islamabad's diplomatic enclave on March 17, 2002, killing a US diplomat's wife and teenage stepdaughter as well as two other worshippers.
Attacks on western targets in Pakistan have been limited since then, with the last being a suicide car bombing in 2006 that killed a US diplomat outside the American consulate in the southern city of Karachi.
Most of the bombings in Pakistan over the past 14 months have targeted security forces or civilians.
Saturday's attack, however, targeted a restaurant that is popular with westerners and serves alcohol -- a rarity in this conservative Islamic republic.
"This restaurant carries the repute that foreigners come here because hard drinks are served with food. The fact that militants chose to strike the place on a weekend night shows that they had done their homework," a senior security official involved in the investigation told the news agency.