4 Threat Matrix: Suicide attacks a response to Predator strikes: Pakistani Taliban

Written by Bill Roggio on September 7, 2010 10:36 AM to 4 Threat Matrix

Available online at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2010/09/suicide_attacks_a_response_to.php

Scores of children trained to become suicide bombers at a camp run by Qair Hussain Mehsud in Spinkai, South Waziristan, prior to its destruction in January 2008. Image courtesy of AfPax Insider.

The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan today claimed it carried out the recent suicide attack on a police station in Lakki Marwat that killed 19 people, including two children and nine policemen. Its spokesman, Azam Tariq, said the Taliban were carrying out the attacks to avenge deaths in US Predator strikes in the tribal areas, and said the group would continue to hit Pakistani security forces. From AFP:

"We are targeting Pakistani security forces because the government has allowed America to launch drone attacks on us," Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP by telephone.

"Rather it is on the Pakistan government's behest that drone attacks target us," he said.

"We will continue suicide attacks on security forces. Civilians should avoid proximity with them." ..."We carried out the Lakki Marwat suicide attack," Tariq said, adding that the Taliban "regretted" the killing of schoolchildren in the attack.

"Our children are also killed in drone attacks," he said.

The last comment is curious, given that the Taliban often use children to carry out suicide attacks. Qari Hussain Mehsud, the Taliban's top trainer of suicide bombers, runs camps for child suicide bombers. Boys as young as 12 have been recruited and trained to carry out attacks.