Pakistani Taleban leader Baitullah Mehsud claimed responsibility Tuesday for a deadly assault on a police academy in Lahore and said his group was planning a terrorist attack on the US capital. Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million bounty on his head from the US, said Monday's attack on the academy was in retaliation for U.S. missile strikes against militants along the Afghan border. “Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world,” Mehsud told The Associated Press by phone. “You can't imagine how we could avenge this threat inside Washington, inside the White House,” he said. Seven cadets and a civilians were killed and scores wounded in the brazen assault Monday on the police academy that came less than a month after a dozen gunmen attacked Sri Lanka's cricket team in the city, killing six police guards and a bus driver. Four militants were killed and three were arrested during an eight-hour gunbattle with security forces in the academy. Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said one of the men captured was an Afghan who had arrived in Lahore 15 days ago and rented a house. The police chief of Punjab, Khawaja Khalid Farooq, said police had detained 50 suspects and they were being questioned. “We wholeheartedly take responsibility for this attack and will carry out more such attacks in future,” Mehsud, an Al Qaeda-linked leader based in the Waziristan ethnic Pashtun tribal region on the Afghan border, told Reuters by telephone. “It's revenge for the drone attacks in Pakistan.” United States has stepped up missile attacks by pilotless drones on militant targets in northwestern Pakistan, causing tension with Pakistani officials who protest they are a violation of the country's sovereignty and kill innocent civilians. At least 35 US drone strikes have killed over 340 people in Pakistan since August last year. Mehsud leads the Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan, or Movement of Taleban Pakistan, a loose umbrella group of factions which has carried out attacks across the country, mainly in the northwest. Authorities have accused him of being behind a string of attacks in Pakistan including the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. The US State Department has branded him a “key Al-Qaeda facilitator” in the semi-autonomous South Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan Pakistani Taleban also have links with Afghan Taleban and send fighters across the border to fight Western forces in Afghanistan. The United States last week announced a $5 million reward for information leading to the location or arrest of Mehsud. He dismissed the US reward for his arrest. “The maximum they can do is martyr me,” he said. “We will exact our revenge on them from inside America.” Mehsud said he had set up a council of mujahedeen grouping different groups “to step up attacks on US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.” Mehsud also claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing that killed four soldiers Monday in Bannu district and a suicide attack targeting a police station in Islamabad last week that killed one officer.
