Tehrik-e-Taliban claims responsibility for Quetta, Lahore attacks

Dreaded commander Qari Hussain, known as "ustad-e-fidayeen" (trainer of suicide attackers), told journalists in the country's northwest on phone yesterday that the attacks in the two cities were carried out by Taliban suicide bombers.

Though the Taliban are fighting the US and the Pakistan government, Shias were also the targets of the militants, he said. "Our war is against America and Pakistan," Hussain said. Attacks on the pattern of the botched car bombing in New York's Time Square will be carried out in Europe and the US soon, he said.

More attacks in Europe and the US will prove that the Taliban are "still organised and active," he said. Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, the militant behind the attempted car bombing in New York, was funded by the Taliban and trained at a camp in the country's volatile tribal belt.

Hussain said the US administration's decision to place the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan on a terrorist blacklist showed that America is scared of the militants. The bounty offered by the US for Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud and top commander Waliur Rehman proved that the Taliban had become "a headache for America," he claimed.

Fifty-nine people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a rally organised by Shia students in Quetta yesterday. Nearly 40 people died when two suicide attackers targeted a Shia procession in Lahore on Wednesday.