Taliban chief: We will amaze world with strike on US

Pakistan's Taliban chief today claimed responsibility for a deadly assault on a police academy in Lahore - and threatened attacks on Washington that would "amaze everyone in the world".

Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million bounty on his head from America, said he wanted to retaliate for US missile attacks on militant bases along Pakistan's lawless border with Afghanistan. He threatened to attack Washington or even the White House.

The FBI said he had made similar threats previously and there was no indication of anything imminent.

Mehsud, who gave a flurry of media interviews yesterday, has no record of striking targets abroad although he is suspected of being behind a 10-man cell arrested in Barcelona in January last year for plotting suicide attacks in Spain.

Pakistan's former government and the CIA consider him the prime suspect in the December 2007 killing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. And Pakistani officials accuse him of harbouring foreign fighters, including Central Asians linked to al Qaeda, and of training suicide bombers.

However, analysts doubt that Taliban fighters carried off Monday's raid on the Lahore academy on their own, saying the group was probably working with militant groups including al Qaeda based far from the Afghan frontier.

The threat poses a challenge to the US as it increases its troop presence in the region - not to mention nuclear-armed Pakistan's own stability.

Mehsud said: "Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world." He offered few details, though in a separate recorded conversation with a radio station, he said the White House was a target. The attack on Lahore's outskirts on Monday left at least 20 people dead, including seven police, and sparked an eight-hour stand-off with security forces that ended when black-clad commandos stormed the compound. Some of the gunmen blew themselves up.

The siege-style approach came weeks after the deadly ambush of Sri Lanka's visiting cricket team in Lahore. Both attacks were reminiscent of November's assault on Mumbai - also blamed on Pakistani militants.

A senior police investigator, Zulfikar Hameed, said that the men arrested for the attack have corroborated Mehsud's involvement. A little-known group believed to be linked to him also claimed credit. Mehsud declined to discuss the group, Fedayeen al-Islam.

Pakistan interior ministry chief Rehman Malik said one attacker who was captured was Afghan, and the initial investigation suggested the conspiracy originated in South Waziristan tribal region, Mehsud's stronghold. But Mr Malik also said the al Qaeda-linked group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi might have played a role. Three gunmen are in custody.