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May 29, 2009
Taliban Warn of ‘Major Attacks’ in Pakistan
By SALMAN MASOOD and MARK McDONALD
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Taliban groups claimed responsibility on Thursday for the bombing that killed at least 26 people and injured several hundred in Lahore a day earlier, and issued an extraordinary warning for people to evacuate Pakistani cities, saying they were preparing “major attacks.”
Hours after the threat, as many as three blasts, including two at crowded bazaars, rocked the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing at least four people and wounding dozens, Pakistani news media reported. In telephone calls to Reuters and The Associated Press, a Pakistani insurgent commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, said that the attack in Lahore and the others threatened by the Taliban were “a reaction” to the Pakistani Army’s campaign against the Taliban in the northwestern Swat Valley.
“We have achieved our target,” he said of the Lahore attack, in which gunmen and suicide bombers rammed a car laden with explosives into a police emergency-response unit, after failing to breach the defenses of the local headquarters of the nation’s premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. “We were looking for this target for a long time.”
“We want the people of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Multan to leave those cities, as we plan major attacks against government facilities in coming days and weeks,” he said in the call to Reuters.
Mr. Mehsud, who is known to be aligned with the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, did not give his location, and it was unclear if he was linked to another Taliban group that claimed responsibility for the attack.
That group, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab, said Thursday in a posting on a Turkish militant Web site that it had staged the assault.
General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the army chief, who was in Lahore on Thursday, said that Pakistan would not be terrorized and that the army remained committed to defeating insurgents, according to a statement by a spokesperson for Pakistan army.
An initial investigation report by Lahore police, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, stated that six attackers in a white colored Toyota van sprayed bullets at officials in the emergency-response unit. Three attackers managed to escape while the other three detonated the explosives-laden van, the report said.
The attack at the ISI command center Wednesday was the third attack in three months in or near Lahore, the principal city of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and affluent province.
The previous attacks — against the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team and a police academy — led officials to worry that Taliban insurgents might be teaming up with local militants, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group suspected of conducting the attacks in Mumbai, India, in November that killed 163 people.
The government announced bounties in newspaper advertisements on Thursday, with rewards starting at $12,400, according to The A.P. Heading the most wanted list was Maulana Fazlullah, the Taliban leader in the Swat district, with a bounty of $62,000.
In Peshawar, details of the death toll from Thursday’s explosions remained unclear and there were contradictory accounts of the number of fatalities.
“We have shifted five dead bodies to the hospital trauma center and about 30 wounded are now in the emergency room,” Zulfiqar Ahmed, an official with the Ehdi Rescue Center, told Reuters. But GEO, a private television network, reported fewer casualties. News reports said the bombs were hidden on motorcycles and detonated by timers.
Two terrorists were killed in gun fight with police, Safwat Ghayur, the Peshawar police chief said while talking to private television news channels. The gun battle lasted for one hour. One injured terrorist was arrested by police.
One explosion tore through the Kisakhawani Bazaar, or storytellers’ market, one of Peshawar’s best known, and reputedly named for the traders and voyagers who once tarried in its narrow streets to exchange their travelers’ tales. Another blast shook a nearby electronics market in the Kabari Bazaar.
Television images on private networks showed firefighters trying to control fires as people fled the blasts and ambulance sirens wailed across the neighborhood.
“I was buying sweets from a store. Suddenly, there was a loud blast,” one witness who identified himself as Shafqat told GEO television. “I lay down on the ground. There was smoke everywhere.”
Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. Reporting was contributed by Waqar Gilani from Lahore, Pakistan; Mark McDonald from Hong Kong; and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/wo...ef=global-home
i haven't time to say much about this at the moment
but i continue to see the situation in pakistan as far most dangerous and unsettling. and i continue to see no real options other than to watch what happens. which sometimes seems like watching a car travel at high speed toward a wall.
except with nukes.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
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