The death toll in the truck bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Saturday rose to 45 and the police said nearly 250 were wounded.

Two charred bodies were found lying in the burnt ruins of the hotel on Sunday morning, and a search was still on for more. Most newspapers estimated the toll would rise to 60.

Up to six Saudis were missing after the attack, the Saudi ambassador said. The Danish Foreign Ministry said a Danish diplomat was missing and one was wounded.

Internal security in nuclear-armed Pakistan, a country vital to the war against Al Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups, has deteriorated at an alarming rate over the past two years.

The bombing bore the signs of an attack by Al Qaeda or an affiliate, a US intelligence official said.

It came hours after new President Asif Ali Zardari, widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, made his first address to parliament a few hundred metres (yards) away, calling for terrorism to be rooted out.

The tightly guarded hotel, part of a US-based chain and popular with foreigners, diplomats and rich Pakistanis, was engulfed in flames for hours after the blast.

Zardari made a televised address to the nation on Sunday and said the bombing was cowardly. "This is an epidemic, a cancer in Pakistan which we will root out," he said. "We will not be afraid of these cowards."    

Pakistan's army is in the midst of a major offensive against Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border, while the US military has intensified attacks on militants on the Pakistani side of the border, infuriating many Pakistanis.

Militants have launched bomb attacks, most on security forces in the northwest, in retaliation for the strikes on them.

"They're giving a very clear, unambiguous message that if the government pursues these policies, this is what (they) will do in response," Talat Masood, a retired general and defence analyst, said of the attack.

"They are saying 'we can strike anywhere, at any time regardless of how good you think your security is'," he said.

An Al Qaeda video, released to mark the seventh anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, included a call for militants in Pakistan to step up their fight.

"You must stand with your Mujahideen brothers in Afghanistan and ... strike the interests of Crusader (Western) allies in Pakistan," Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, an Al Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, said on the tape.

Saturday's attack was the worst yet in the capital. It came six months after a civilian government took power and a month after it forced former army chief and firm US ally Pervez Musharraf to step down as president.

A crater up to 20 feet (6 metres) deep was in the road in front of the gates of the hotel, which had been bombed twice before. The Interior Ministry said the bomb probably contained more than 500 kg (1,100 lb) of explosives.

Fire engulfed the Marriott, though most of the people inside had managed to flee before it spread.

Police said they had retrieved 45 bodies and the Interior Ministry said 236 people were wounded. One foreigner was killed, an American, and 13 foreigners were wounded, police and hospital officials said.

"We still don't know whether bodies are still lying under the rubble," police chief Asghar Raza Gardazi told Reuters. "We have not received any report of missing but a search is still going on."    

Earlier, the Danish Foreign Ministry said a Danish diplomat was missing and one was wounded. Up to six Saudi Arabians were missing, the Saudi ambassador said.

Flames and smoke poured out of the 290-room, city centre hotel. Dozens of cars were destroyed and windows shattered hundreds of metres away.

Soldiers cordoned off the area. The fire was put out after six hou