The truck carrying the bomb was stopped at the hotel's front barrier by security guards. Shots were fired; at least one guard shot back. Then a smaller blast went off -- possibly a delay switch designed to scatter first responders before the main charge detonated. Four minutes separated the first explosion from the second. The main blast triggered a natural gas leak that set the top floor of the five-story, 258-room hotel ablaze. The fire moved fast, engulfing the entire structure. The hotel's owner, Sadruddin Hashwani of the Hashoo Group, later confirmed that every security guard at the gate died in the initial detonation. They had done what they were supposed to do -- stop the truck. It was not enough.

The majority of the dead were Pakistani citizens -- hotel staff, guests, visitors. Among them were approximately 40 hotel employees, including the security guards who gave their lives trying to prevent the attack. The bombing also killed foreign nationals: two American military personnel, a Danish intelligence agent, and an Egyptian citizen. Czech Ambassador Ivo Zdárek survived the initial blast but re-entered the burning building to help with rescue efforts. He was trapped by the fire and died alongside his Vietnamese companion. Six Germans, four Britons, and a Filipina hotel receptionist were among the hundreds wounded. A U.S. Navy cryptologist, Petty Officer Matthew J. O'Bryant, and Air Force Major Rodolfo Ivan Rodriguez also lost their lives that night.

The Marriott was not a random target. It was the most prestigious hotel in Islamabad, situated near government buildings, diplomatic missions, and foreign embassies. About thirty U.S. Marines, reportedly en route to Afghanistan, were staying on the fourth floor -- one of the floors most severely damaged by the fire that followed the blast. Senior CIA officers were also believed to have been in the hotel at the time. The attack came during a volatile moment in Pakistani politics: President Pervez Musharraf had stepped down the previous month, new President Asif Ali Zardari had just taken office, and U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas were escalating. Three days before the bombing, an American airstrike had hit the village of Baghar Cheena. Pakistan's Law Minister Farooq Naek called the Marriott attack "Pakistan's 9/11."

The investigation that followed produced more questions than answers. The Interior Secretary admitted to the Senate that the blast resulted from a "defective security system" and acknowledged that intelligence agencies had warned Islamabad police about an explosives-laden vehicle entering the city. Seven militants were arrested in Punjab, and 400 kilograms of additional explosives were seized. A group calling itself Fedayeen Islam claimed responsibility. But on May 5, 2010, the four men charged -- Mohammed Aqeel, Rana Ilyas, Muhammad Hamid Afzal, and Tahseen Ullah -- were acquitted of all charges because no evidence was presented against them. British Airways suspended flights to Islamabad after the attack and did not resume service for more than a decade, until June 2019.

The hotel was rebuilt and eventually reopened, but the bombing left marks that outlasted the reconstruction. Hashwani established the Islamabad Marriott Assistance Fund with an initial donation of $126,000, and Marriott International contributed through the J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation via United Way. The families of forty dead employees and scores of wounded workers depended on those funds. The Marriott bombing became a reference point in Pakistan's long struggle with terrorism -- a single night that concentrated the country's political tensions, its entanglement in the war on terror, and the human cost of both into one burning building in the heart of its capital. The crater was filled in. The memory has proven harder to smooth over.