Stop handing wanted terrorists over to the US, Pakistan warned

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4386,264572,00.htmlA MILITANT group has posted an Internet statement in the name of Al-Qaeda claiming responsibility for Friday’s attempt to assassinate Pakistan’s prime minister-designate.

’One of our blessed battalions tried to hunt a head of one of America’s infidels in Pakistan while he was returning from Fateh Jang, but God wanted him to survive,’ the statement said, referring to the town near the Pakistani capital where Friday’s suicide attack on Mr Shaukat Aziz took place.

Written in Arabic, the message was posted yesterday on an Islamic website known for carrying messages from Islamic militant groups. It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the claim. The group calls itself the Islambouli Brigades of Al-Qaeda.

Lieutenant Khaled Islambouli was the leader of the group of soldiers who assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat during a military parade in Cairo in 1981.

The statement said the attempted assassination was a response to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his transferring wanted militants to the custody of the United States.

Addressing itself to General Musharraf and the Pakistani government, the statement said ’this operation yesterday will be followed by a series of painful strikes if you don’t stop what you are doing by complying to the wicked Bush’s orders’.

The group said it was giving the government a ’period of truce’ until it ceased to hand over militants and ’behaved in a different way’.

The statement did not say how long the truce would last, but it warned that this message was ’the last warning’.

It accused Mr Aziz, currently the Finance Minister, of being ’a follower of the wicked Bush and his cronies’.

The death toll from the suicide bomb attack against Mr Aziz, meanwhile, rose to eight. Among those killed was Mr Aziz’s driver, who had not yet closed the bullet-proof door on the car when a man approached and detonated a bomb. — AP

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