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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.”
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 |