THREATENING an attack on the White House that would "amaze" the world, Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan's most wanted Islamic terrorist, yesterday claimed responsibility for Monday's deadly assault on a Lahore police academy.
Mehsud, who last week had a £3.5 million bounty placed on his head by the US, said the attack was in retaliation for American missile strikes against militants along the Afghan border.
"Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze
everyone in the world," Mehsud said by phone. He provided no details.
Mehsud has never been directly linked to any attacks outside Pakistan, but strikes blamed on his network of fighters have widened in scope and ambition in recent years.
Mehsud leads the Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan, or Movement of Taleban Pakistan, a loose umbrella group of factions which has carried out assaults across the country.
Pakistan's former government and the CIA named Mehsud as the prime suspect behind the December 2007 killing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Officials accuse him of harbouring foreign fighters, including Central Asians linked to al-Qaeda, and of training suicide bombers.
In his latest comments, Mehsud identified the White House as one of the targets.
Mehsud also claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing that killed four soldiers in Bannu district on Monday and a suicide attack targeting a police station in Islamabad last week that killed one officer.
Such attacks pose a major test for the weak, year-old civilian administration of Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari that has been gripped with political turmoil in recent weeks.
An interior ministry spokesman said it was too early to respond to Mehsud's claim, but the department's chief, Rehman Malik, said on Monday that authorities had information linking the Lahore attack to Mehsud. He said at least one of the attackers arrived there about 15 days ago from Mehsud's stronghold of South Waziristan near the border with Afghanistan, and rented a house.
The gunmen who attacked the police academy killed seven officers and two civilians, holding security forces at bay for about eight hours before being overpowered by Pakistani commandos. Some of the attackers wore police uniforms, and they took hostages and threw grenades during the assault.
Earlier yesterday, a spokesman from a little-known militant group linked to the Pakistani Taleban also claimed responsibility for the attack and a similar ambush-style attack against the Sri Lankan cricket team earlier this month.
Omar Farooq, who said he is the spokesman for Fedayeen al-Islam, said the group would carry out more attacks unless Pakistani troops withdraw from tribal areas near the Afghan border and the US stops its drone strikes. The group previously said it was behind the September bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad that killed 54 people.
Mehsud declined to comment on Fedayeen al-Islam's claim that it carried out the attack or to say whether the group is linked to his own. The Pakistani Taleban leader also said he was not deterred by the US bounty on his head: "I wish to die and embrace martyrdom. You can't imagine how we could avenge this threat inside Washington, inside the White House," he said.
The Pakistani Taleban has links with al-Qaeda and Afghan Taleban militants who have launched attacks against Nato forces in Afghanistan from a base between the countries.
Pakistan faces tremendous pressure to eradicate militants from its soil and has launched several military operations in the Afghan border region.
The US has stepped up drone attacks against militants in the area, causing tension with Pakistani officials who protest they are a violation of the country's sovereignty and kill civilians.
Monday's highly co-ordinated attack highlighted that militants in the country pose a threat far outside the border region. It prompted the interior ministry chief to say that militant groups were "destabilising the country."
After gunmen stormed the academy, security forces surrounded the compound, exchanging fire in televised scenes reminiscent of the militant siege in the Indian city of Mumbai in November.
Officials were yesterday still trying to sort out how many attackers were involved, giving varying accounts to the media.
Zulfikar Hameed, a senior Lahore police investigator, said that three of the attackers blew themselves up when commandos retook the academy and one was shot by security forces.
Hameed said it was difficult to say precisely how many militants carried out the attack and some may have escaped.
Tasneem Qureshi, a top official at the interior ministry, told Express News TV that four attackers were in custody and "one, who was wounded, managed to escape".
Punjab police chief, Khawaja Khalid Farooq, said one of the captured militants had provided useful information and that about 50 other people in Lahore were detained overnight for questioning.
AL-QAEDA ALLYINTELLIGENCE officials say Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan movement is a loose alliance of about 13 groups based on the Afghan border.
Mehsud, an al-Qaeda ally, was declared emir of the group in 2005. It is thought Mhe has been behind a wave of attacks across Pakistan since the army stormed Islamabad's Red Mosque in July 2007 to crush a militant movement based there.
The full article contains 869 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
