[An Nahar] Pakistain's umbrella Taliban faction grabbed credit on Tuesday for planting a bomb under the car of a prominent journalist and TV anchorman and threatened a second liquidation bid.Hamid Mir, who hosts prime-time show Capital Talk on Geo television and writes a column for the biggest-selling newspaper Jang, was criticized by the Taliban last month in the wake of the shooting of teenage activist Malala Yousafzai.
"Life and death is in the hands of Allah. Allah saved his life but we will make a similar attempt again," Tehrik-e-Taliban front man Ehsanullah Ehsan told Agence La Belle France Presse by telephone from an unknown location.
"Hamid Mir earlier shot into prominence for working in the interest of Islam and Mohammedans. We targeted him because now he is working against Islam and Mohammedans," he said.
Police said the device -- half a kilogram of explosives fitted with a detonator -- was found stuck under his car in Pakistain's capital Islamabad on Monday.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik
Pak politician, Interior Minister under the Gilani government. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Nawaz Sharif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. He had to give up the interior ministry job because he held dual Brit citizenship.
offered a cash reward of 50 million rupees ($500,000) for anyone with information about who was responsible for the powerful bomb.