Tehrik E- Taliban Pakistan Claim Responsibility for Army HQ Attack

As I mentioned over the weekend, the TTP have claimed responsibility for the Army HQ attack in a call to Geo News and Dawn has published the same information today. The TTP is working in conjunction with other groups and apparently a punjabi faction provided the foot soldiers who carried out the attack.

Tehreek-e-Taliban, Pakistan were planning attack on GHQ in collaboration with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

Watchers should not be surprised that the TTP and other groups link up in the same way that NATO forces join hands to cover different locations.

The Guardian today discusses the only surviving attacker who is seriously injured. He is a former member of the Pakistani army.

Aqeel, the only surviving attacker, was being treated for serious injuries, (army spokesman )Abbas said. He confirmed that the militant was a former army medical corps soldier from Kahuta, a town in the army's Punjabi recruitment heartland that is home to a major nuclear weapons facility.
Aqeel deserted the army in 2004, he said, and joined Jaish-e-Muhammad, a notorious militant group that in recent years has spawned splinter groups which have become allied to al-Qaida.

Today's blast targeting a military convoy in Shangla by the SWAT valley killing over 41 is part of the same deadly protest promised by the TTP and its cohorts.