Pakistan braced for reprisals on Saturday, with police on alert for suicide attacks in the city where a senior Taliban leader was captured this week. The arrest of Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, a member of Taliban supremo Mullah Mohammad Omar's inner circle, was disclosed to Reuters by several security officials, though it has not been confirmed by Pakistani authorities.Extra security forces were deployed at government buildings and public places in Quetta, the southwest city where Akhund was caught on Monday. Police there announced on Saturday the arrest of an Afghan involved in a suicide attack on a courtroom that killed 16 people, including a judge, on February 17. "He told us that there are more suicide bombers in the city who can carry out attacks," Senior Superintendent Police Qazi Abdul Wahid told a news conference in the provincial capital of Baluchistan, where some 600,000 Afghans are living.
Pakistan has been in the grip of a security scare, as jihadi groups sympathetic to al Qaeda and the Taliban have carried out a series of suicide and bomb attacks in cities around the country following an air strike against compounds used by militants in the Waziristan tribal area on the Afghan border.