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Investigators link suicide blasts to Taliban

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani investigators said on Wednesday that they had found leads linking a string of suicide bombings to Taliban militants, AFP reported.

They said six men arrested in the northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan at the weekend told interrogators about a web of militants, connected to a senior Taliban commander, who were plotting suicide and car bomb attacks across the country. The attacks have highlighted Pakistan’s difficulties as it battles insurgents based in its northwestern tribal regions. “During the investigations we have got good clues suggesting the bombings were by militants based in the Waziristan tribal region,” a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The bombings include one in Peshawar on Sunday in which 15 people were killed and 30 injured. A suicide attacker also blew himself up outside a hotel in Islamabad on Friday, killing a guard, while another bomber killed two people at a police checkpost in Dera Ismail Khan on Monday. Security sources said the six men who were arrested in raids from Dera Ismail Khan on Sunday had given details about a network of insurgents in Waziristan planning bombings in major Pakistani cities.

The men were linked to Baitullah Mahsud, a wanted Taliban commander allegedly in charge of thousands of fighters operating in the the South and North Waziristan regions, the officials said. “They told interrogators that Baitullah was unhappy with army’s killing of tribesmen in the name of action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda and he planned revenge attacks in other Pakistani cities,” an official familiar with the interrogation told AFP.

He said police in Dera Ismail Khan believed the 17-year-old who blew himself up on Monday was from South Waziristan and had contact with the six arrested men.

Staff Report adds: A joint investigation team probing the January 26 suicide attack outside a five star hotel in Islamabad is looking for an Uzbek national who they believe masterminded the bombing.

Sources said that the investigators had learned that the Uzbek, Umer, had entered Pakistan from Afghanistan and taken refuge in South Waziristan. He had stayed there for more than 10 days and persuaded a man there to carry out the suicide attack. He had escaped an action by paramilitary forces in South Waziristan and taken refuge in Rawalpindi or its suburbs, where investigators are searching for him, the sources said. The team has also prepared a sketch of the suicide attacker, who was said to be in his early 20s. The Interior Ministry has announced a Rs 1 million reward for anybody who provided information on the suicide bomber.

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