Islamabad- More than 20 people were injured Saturday in an apparent suicide car bomb attack on the five-star Marriot hotel in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, witnesses and officials said.

"I saw a car approaching the main entrance of the hotel and then it blew up," an injured witness, Mukhtar Ahmad, told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa before he was taken to hospital by ambulance.

A medical officer at the city's Poly Clinic Hospital said more than two dozen people were being treated for injuries, some of them foreigners.

A dpa correspondent at the scene said some parts of the hotel caught fire after the blast.

The luxury hotel is located in a high security zone, about 500 metres from the residencies of Pakistan's prime minister and president. (dpa)