[Dawn] The Pakistani Taliban on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing carried out by a teenage boy in northwest Shangla district, which killed 45 people at a busy market.A boy aged about 13 and wearing a suicide vest threw himself at a military convoy passing through a Alpuri town on Monday, the latest in a wave of attacks that have killed 125 people in Pakistan in eight days, officials said.
'We claim responsibility for the Shangla suicide attack. This is revenge for our martyrs,' Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq told an AFP reporter by telephone from an undisclosed location.
'This is part of the series of attacks that we are carrying out. Wait and see more,' he added.
The feared Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group have vowed to avenge the death of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US missile strike in the lawless northwest tribal region of South Waziristan on August 5.
The Islamist extremist group has already claimed a weekend raid on Pakistan's army headquarters, when gunmen took 42 hostages in a brazen siege ending Sunday with nine militants, 11 soldiers and three hostages killed.
Insurgents said attacks would continue until military operations against their strongholds came to an end.
Security forces marched into Swat valley -- which borders Shangla -- in April this year, after Taliban insurgents extended their grip on the area and advanced to with 100 kilometres (60 miles) of Islamabad.
Government and military officials are now claiming success in the operation, and have vowed to take the anti-Taliban offensive into South Waziristan, the seat of the TTP and a rugged area outside direct government control.
Analysts say a spike in attacks -- which include a suicide car bomb Friday killing 52 people in Peshawar city -- are being carried out by militants keen to deter any advance into their sanctuaries along the Afghan border.
Pakistan fighter jets on Tuesday bombed the region killing six suspected militants, part of a months-long campaign the military says aims to 'soften-up'the area ahead of an offensive by ground troops.