Pakistani Taliban vow wider attacks

At least 41 have been killed in extremist attacks since Wednesday.

McClatchy Newspapers

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Islamic extremists attacked two marketplaces and two police posts Thursday in northwest Pakistan, killing at least six civilians and five soldiers, and they also took credit for a deadly vehicle bombing Wednesday in Lahore and threatened more attacks in major cities throughout the Punjab heartland, police said.

The assaults and threats appear to be motivated by revenge for the military’s advances in its offensive to recapture the Swat valley in the North West Frontier Province from Taliban extremists.

Police said the militants had packed the explosives on two motorcycles, which they parked at crowded marketplaces in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province and a key city on a main supply route for U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan. After detonating the explosives, the extremists fought police in gun battles that ended with two militants killed and at least one arrested.

There were separate bomb attacks on a security checkpoint outside Peshawar, in which five soldiers were killed, and in Dera Ismail Khan, 150 miles to the south.

The violence followed a gun and bomb assault Wednesday in the eastern city of Lahore that killed at least 30 people and wounded 250. The Pakistani Taliban on Thursday claimed responsibility for the Lahore attack, which targeted the offices of the Pakistan military’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency and destroyed a police complex.

Hakimullah Mehsud, who commands Pakistani Taliban in three tribal agencies along the Afghan border, warned the Lahore attack was only a taste of things to come.

“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 told the Reuters news agency. Those cities are in Punjab province, the heart of Pakistan, which comprises some 60 percent of the country’s population.