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Pakistani Taliban claims Lahore attack

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s devastating attack on the Lahore offices of Pakistan’s intelligence service ISI and the city police that killed at least 26 people and wounded 250 people.

A Colonel in the ISI was among those killed in the Lahore attack along with five of his colleagues, 14 policemen and six civilians. A caller identifying himself as Hakimullah Mehsud, a deputy to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan leader Beithullah Mehsud, spoke to BBC and Western wire services to claim the Taliban had carried out the attack to avenge the ongoing military operations in Swat in the North-West Frontier Province.

He told BBC that the Taliban would carry out more attacks in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Multan if the military did not call off the Swat operations immediately.

The military, meanwhile, released the recording of a telephone conversation intercepted by it, purportedly between Swat Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan and an unidentified person.

In the conversation, Muslim Khan was berating the man at the other end in Pashto for not going to the aid of the Swat Taliban, and reminding him about a “commitment”. Presumably referring to Taliban militants in other areas, he accused them of sitting in “peace and silence” when they should have been launching attacks on security forces in Punjab.

“There’s need that they should strike soldiers in Punjab so that they understand and feel pain. Strikes should be carried out on their homes so their kids get killed and then they’ll realise,” he says in the conversation.

The man at the other end talks of the immense pressure on account of drone attacks, and the tightened security at government installations that was making it difficult to carry out the attacks.

But he said now there were “strict instructions” to cadres that they should strike anywhere possible if they were unable to reach important targets.

President Asif Ali Zardari, who was in Karachi at the time of the attack, held a series of meetings in the city and said the operation would continue.

But on a devastating day for security forces, Mr. Zardari made an attempt to keep up morale with promises to the police forces in all provinces of more personnel, better salaries, facilities, equipment and training

An unknown group called Tehreek-e-Taliban Punjab was also reported to have claimed the attack in a message posted on Turkish jihadist websites. SITE Intelligence, an American group tracking jihad websites, reported the claim late on Wednesday.

In an interview to a private television channel, Interior Minister Rehman Malik confirmed media reports of the arrests of three suspects in Islamabad who were reportedly planning an attack in the capital similar to the one in Lahore. “The government has released advertisements in newspapers announcing a Rs.5-million reward for information on the whereabouts of Swat Taliban leader Mullah Fazlluah, and Rs.4 million for Muslim Khan, the group’s spokesman.”

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