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India-Pakistan
'Peshawar suicide attack Taliban's revenge'
2007-05-20
The May 15 suicide attack on the Afghan-owned Marhaba Hotel was the Taliban’s revenge for the arrest of their senior military operational commander a month ago and the killing of Mullah Dadullah in Afghanistan. “The attack on the hotel was planned from inside Afghanistan targeting the owner and his son,” highly-placed sources told Daily Times on Saturday.

Around 25 people, including the hotel owner and his son and relatives, were killed when the suicide bomber blew himself up as customers packed the hotel restaurant at lunchtime on Tuesday. The sources said senior Taliban commander Mullah Saeedullah and Qari Rehmat Din, Afghan prayer leader in Mardan district, were “picked up” from areas close to the hotel and handed over to the United States in April. “Both men are with the US at the Bagram airbase (in Afghanistan),” they said. “It all happened in the first week of last month and the arrest of Mullah Saeedullah was a big setback for the Taliban.”

The Taliban believed that Ainuddin, son of hotel owner Sadruddin, who is an ethnic Uzbek, had “tipped off Pakistani intelligence about Mullah Saeedullah.”
The Taliban believed that Ainuddin, son of hotel owner Sadruddin, who is an ethnic Uzbek, had “tipped off Pakistani intelligence about Mullah Saeedullah,” said the sources. The suicide bomber had taped a message on his legs warning that “US spies will meet the same fate”. The Afghan hotel owner, said the sources, had had “close contacts” with Rashid Dostum and Uzbek Afghan soldiers were involved with US forces in the killing of Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah in Sangeen Valley of Helmand province on May 12. “We believe that the Taliban targeted Sadruddin for two reasons - for Mullah Saeedullah’s arrest and the killing of Mullah Dadullah. Uzbek soldiers from the Afghan National Army were involved in the attack on him,” the sources added.

But they believed the attacker blew up the hotel up without approval from the senior Taliban leadership. “We think the attacker took it on himself to blow up the hotel to avenge the two losses the Taliban suffered. If this was not the case then the Taliban would have killed the hotel owner or his family members in a different fashion.”
Posted by:Fred

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