AA Shaheed Brigade claims responsibility for Peshawar attack

A little-known group led by a militant commander with links to the Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the suicide car bombing of the Pearl Continental hotel in Peshawar, saying it was even capable of carrying out an attack in the federal capital.
 
Amir Muawiya, claiming himself a spokesman of the Abdullah Azzam Shaheed Brigade, telephoned reporters in northwestern Kohat town yesterday to claim responsibility for Tuesday's attack on the five-star hotel and warned the group would carry out more such bombings.
 
Asked for proof that his group had carried out the attack on the Pearl Continental, Muawiya said his organisation would be willing to explode a small bomb outside the BBC office in Islamabad to prove its power and capability.
 
Muawiya said the bombing was carried out in retaliation for operations by Pakistani armed forces "at the behest of the US" in Swat and Malakand division of the North West Frontier Province and the tribal areas of Darra Adam Khel and Aurakzai Agency. He claimed "important people", including foreigners, were killed when the hotel was bombed.
 
Seventeen people, including at least three foreigners, were killed and over 50 were injured in the attack on the Pearl Continental, which is located in the high-security cantonment in Peshawar. 
 
A suicide bomber detonated a truck packed with 500 kg of explosives in the hotel's parking lot, reducing a section of the building into rubble.
 
Muawiya also claimed responsibility for other recent terrorist attacks in Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar. He claimed his group had carried out the attack on the police training centre at Manawan near Lahore and the bombing of NATO transport terminals on the outskirts of Peshawar.
 
Reports said Muawiya is a Pakistani Taliban commande operating in Darra Adam Khel, which is located between NWFP capital Peshawar and Kohat. His group, which is led by commander Tariq Afridi, is affiliated to Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.
 
Muawiya told reporters that different groups used to claim responsibility for bomb attacks till now but the central 'shura' or council of Taliban and al-Qaeda had decided that only the Abdullah Azzam Shaheed Brigade would do so in future.
 

Reports said the name of Muawiya's group was apparently intended to honour late Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian from Jordan who was among the first Arab nationals to volunteer to join the jihad against forces of the former Soviet Union that occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s.
 
Azzam is credited with convincing Osama bin Laden  Ayman al-Zawahiri, Sheikh Omar Abdur Rahman and others to come to Peshawar and take part in the Afghan war against Soviet forces. Azzam was killed with his two sons in a bomb blast in Peshawar in the late 1980s.