Pakistani Taliban Leader Vows Attack on Washington

By ZAHID HUSSAIN IN ISLAMABAD and MATTHEW ROSENBERG IN LAHORE
Wall Street Journal

The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, a man with a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, threatened Tuesday to carry out a terror attack on the U.S. capital, and said his forces were behind the assault on a police academy in eastern Pakistan.

Baitullah Mehsud said fighters loyal to him raided the police academy on the outskirts of Lahore on Monday to avenge U.S. missile strikes against Islamic militants based along the border with Afghanistan, a region largely controlled by the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Monday's attack on the police academy, which left 12 people dead, "was in retaliation for the ongoing drone attacks in the tribal areas. There will be more such attacks," he said by telephone from an undisclosed location presumably in the South Waziristan tribal region, his base.

Mr. Mehsud's claim of credit added to the fears that militant violence which has engulfed much of northwestern Pakistan is now spreading to the nuclear-armed country's eastern heartland, Punjab. The province had until recently been spared much of the violence, although some of Pakistan's most potent Islamic militant groups originated in the region and still draw recruits from its poor, rural villages.

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