Taliban Claim Pakistan Bomb Attack

LAHORE, Pakistan — Hours after the Pakistani government placed bounties on 21 insurgency leaders it has blamed for a bomb attack here, Taliban groups claimed responsibility Thursday for the assault that killed at least two dozen people and wounded nearly 300.

In telephone calls to Reuters and The Associated Press, a Pakistani insurgent commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, said, “We have achieved our target. We were looking for this target for a long time.”

He also said the attack in Lahore on Wednesday was “a reaction to the Swat operation,” a reference to the Pakistani Army’s campaign against Taliban militants in the northwestern Swat Valley. The government claims it has killed more than 1,000 insurgents in the current offensive.

In the Lahore attack, gunmen and suicide bombers struck a police emergency-response unit in one of the city’s busiest districts, ramming a truck laden with explosives into the squad’s building. A collateral target was a nearby command center of the Directorate ofInter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, according to army and intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

Mr. Mehsud, who is known to be aligned with the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, did not give his location, and it was unclear if he was linked to another Taliban group that claimed responsibility for the attack.

A group calling itself Tehreek-i-Taliban Punjab, in a posting on a Turkish jihadi Web site, said Thursday that it had staged the assault.

In his phone call, the news agencies reported, Mr. Mehsud warned of further violent attacks.

“We want the people of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Multan to leave those cities, as we plan major attacks against government facilities in coming days and weeks,” he said in the call to Reuters.

The government announced its bounties with ads in several leading newspapers on Thursday, with rewards starting at $12,400, according to the Associated Press. No. 1 on the most wanted list was Maulana Fazlullah, the Taliban leader in the Swat district, with a bounty of $62,000.

The assault on Wednesday was the third attack in three months in or near Lahore, the principal city of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and affluent province.

The previous attacks — against the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team and a police academy — led officials to worry that Taliban insurgents might be teaming up with local militants, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group suspected of conducting the attacks in Mumbai, India, in November that killed at least 163 people.

Salman Masood reported from Lahore, Pakistan, and Mark McDonald reported from Hong Kong.