LESS than 24 hours after Pakistan Taleban leader Baitullah Mehsud threatened to attack the White House in retaliation for America's pilotless drone strikes on Pakistani targets, the US answered yesterday with a volley of missiles which killed about 12 of the militant's fighters.
The attack – by a pilotless drone – hit a compound of a Taleban commander loyal to Mehsud, Hakimullah Mehsud.
The attack came after Baitullah Mehsud claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a police academy in the eastern city of Lahore, say
ing it was retaliation for US missile strikes on militant strongholds along the Afghan border. Mehsud also vowed to launch an attack on Washington or even the White House.
Hakimullah Mehsud later spoke by phone and vowed revenge.
"This wasn't a minor thing. The pain of this attack will be felt in Islamabad," he said from an undisclosed location.
He did not elaborate but said his men would not give up their fight: "Let the Americans use all their drones, we'll fight them on the battlefield."
Another Taleban official said an Arab militant known as Kaka was killed in the attack.
The US, frustrated by an intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan getting support from the Pakistani side of the border, began launching more drone attacks last year.
Since then, more than 30 US strikes have killed about 300 people, including mid-level al-Qaeda members, according to reports from Pakistani officials, residents and militants.
Yesterday's strike points to a geographical widening of targets, occurring in the largely peaceful Orakzai region – previous attacks have focused on the North and South Waziristan tribal regions where Baitullah Mehsud is strongest.
But Taleban are known to have infiltrated the Orakzai area, as they have done elsewhere in the country's northwest.
On an official level, Pakistan objects to the strikes. Officials say about one in six of the attacks over the past year caused civilian deaths without killing any militants, and that fuels anti-US sentiment, complicating the military's struggle to subdue violence.
About 150 clerics and elders from Mehsud's tribe held a protest in the town of Tank, in North West Frontier Province, to condemn the drone strikes.
One cleric, Hassam-ud-din, told the crowd the government approved the US strikes but should stop them immediately.
Early last year, the United States stopped forewarning Pakistan about the strikes because of suspicion some Pakistani agents were tipping off militants they regarded as assets.
Unlike other al-Qaeda-linked militants, Baitullah Mehsud has no record of attacking targets abroad, although he is suspected of being behind a ten-man cell arrested in Barcelona in January 2008 for plotting suicide attacks in Spain. The US recently placed a $5 million bounty on Mehsud's head.
Pakistan's former government and the CIA have named him as the prime suspect behind the December 2007 killing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Pakistani officials accuse him of harbouring foreign fighters, including Central Asians linked to al-Qaeda, and of training suicide bombers.
