The Taliban claimed responsibility yesterday for recent suicide attacks in Pakistan, including the assassination of a leading moderate cleric and the bombing of a Peshawar hotel frequented by foreigners.
Thousands of people were expected to gather yesterday for the funeral of Sarfraz Naeemi, whose death in a blast at his seminary in Lahore triggered a wave of anger and revulsion toward militants in the country’s cultural capital.
Police said the bombing was a targeted assassination of the cleric, who had recently condemned suicide attacks as un-Islamic, denounced the Taliban as murderers and “a stigma on Islam.” He also threw his support behind the military operation against the Taliban in the Swat Valley region.
The seminary bombing was echoed within minutes at a mosque used by troops in the northwestern city of Noshehra. The attacks took the count of suicide bombings to five in eight days, including a huge blast at the luxury Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar that killed 11 people, some of whom were foreign UN workers.
Taliban commander Saeed Hafiz claimed responsibility for the blasts at the seminary, hotel and in Noshehra on behalf of Tehrik-i-Taliban, the group headed by Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, local media reported. The group has threatened a campaign of attacks in retaliation for the Swat offensive.
Naeemi was mortally wounded when a suicide bomber blew up in his offices at seminary shortly after Friday prayers ended. Four others died and three were wounded, police official Sohail Sukhera said.
Hundreds of outraged seminary students gathered at the scene and demanded the Taliban leave Pakistan, shouting “Down with the Taliban!”
“I was still in the mosque when I heard a big bang. We rushed toward the office and there was a smell of explosives in the air. There was blood and several people were crying in pain,” Naeemi’s son, Waqar, said.
A leading moderate, Naeemi advocated equal access to education for women and the use of computers in schools — ideas sharply at odds with the Taliban’s harsh interpretation of Islam.
The attack was quickly condemned as un-Islamic.
“A true Muslim even cannot think of such activity,” said Mufti Muneebur Rehman, a senior moderate cleric.
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