ISLAMABAD: Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan, an outlawed terrorist organization, on Wednesday claimed responsibility for last Monday’s suicide attack that left more than 43 people dead in Pakistan’s commercial capital Karachi.
“We had launched the bomber who managed to carry out his assignment successfully,” Asmatullah Shaheen, a self-styled commander of TTP, told BBC Radio by telephone.
Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has posted a Rs.10-million ($118,690) bounty for Shaheen’s capture dead or alive when it published a list last month of its most-wanted TTP warlords and offered combined rewards of $5 million.
An Interior Ministry official told Arab News that Shaheen had been a close associate of slain TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud.
Shaheen threatened more such attacks on government installations in the coming days. “We carried out the Karachi bombing and we will carry out more such attacks, within 10 days,” he said.
The prospect of more violence comes at a tricky time for President Asif Ali Zardari, who already faces political heat because corruption charges against some of his aides may be revived.
The scale of his troubles were clear on Monday, when a suicide bomber defied heavy security and detonated explosives strapped to his body as crowds marched down Mohammad Ali Jinnah Road in the heart of Pakistan’s largest city on Monday, turning the holy day of Ashura into a bloodbath. It was the deadliest attack in Karachi in more than two years and one of the deadliest single sectarian-linked attacks in the country’s history.
Monday’s attack sparked riots as mourners went on the rampage, throwing stones at ambulances, torching cars and buildings and reducing shops to charred wreckage. Firefighters continued to drench the flames Wednesday.
In a sign of mounting frustrations, Karachi religious and political leaders called for a strike for Friday to condemn that attack, one of the worst in the city since 2007.
More than a dozen factions based in different parts of northwest Pakistan formed the TTP, or Taleban Movement of Pakistan, a loose umbrella group, in late 2007. Led by Hakimullah Mehsud since a US drone attack killed founder Baitullah Mehsud in August, TTP has claimed and been blamed for some of the worst attacks.
Pakistan has been pressing a major offensive against TTP in its South Waziristan stronghold on the Afghan border since October. Any involvement by the network in a deadly attack in Karachi, hundreds of miles away from its tribal headquarters, would suggest that TTP capabilities are still potent despite the two-month operation.
— With input from agencies
