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 At least 57 Pakistanis were killed during a popular flag-lowering
ceremony on Sunday when a bomber tried to get as close as possible
to the border in a possible attempt to cause casualties on the
Indian side as well.
Ehsanullah Ehsan, a prominent militant and spokesman for the group,
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Jamaat Ahrar (TTP-JA), said he had warned
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that attacks in India were in
the pipeline.
"I have already conveyed it to Modi ... that if our suicide bombers
can carry out attacks on this side of the border, they can easily do
it on other side of the border in India," he told Reuters by
telephone from an undisclosed location.
"I told him that his hands are red with the blood of Kashmiri
mujahideen (fighters) and innocent people of Gujarat for which he
would have to pay the price."
He earlier tweeted in English: "You (Modi) are the killer of
hundreds of Muslims. We wl (will) take the revenge of innocent
people of Kashmir and Gugrat" (sic). An Indian intelligence official
said the account appeared genuine.
 Kashmir is a disputed Himalayan territory over which India and
Pakistan have fought two of their three wars.
Gujarat - misspelt in the tweet - is a western Indian state where
more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed in
inter-religious rioting in 2002, when Modi was its chief minister.
India has long accused Pakistani militants of trying to attack its
targets, particularly after the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166
people were killed when Pakistani gunmen went on a three-day rampage
in India's financial capital.
Ehsan said however that the Sunday attack was specifically aimed at
the Pakistani military.
The elaborate border parade, which draws hundreds of people every
day, is conducted by the military of both sides, making it a target
for Taliban militants fighting to topple the Pakistani government
and establish an Islamic theocracy.
"We have proudly stated that our target was the Pakistani security
forces and their installations in which we succeeded," Ehsan told
Reuters.
The central Pakistani Taliban group, known as the TTP, has
effectively disintegrated this year and split into a range of
smaller groups such as TTP-JA who appear to be exploiting their ties
to al Qaeda to broaden their mission beyond Pakistan.
Ehsan said that unlike the TTP's narrow focus on war in the tribal
areas on the Afghan border, his outfit sought to attack countries
around the region.
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"The TTP focuses on Pakistan only, while we have a global agenda of
jihad and therefore we have people from all over the world
including the Arab and Western world for this mission." AL QAEDA
THREAT
TTP-JA has announced its support for the Middle Eastern group
Islamic State, whose belligerent anti-Western ideology has begun to
inspire militants across South Asia.
The group's openly anti-Indian rhetoric differs from that of the
mainstream Pakistani Taliban, who are mainly focused on their
insurgency against Pakistani security forces in the volatile tribal
northwest of the country.
A successful attack on an Indian target would severely affect the
already frosty relations between the nuclear-armed rivals.
Shelling on their disputed Kashmir border is an almost daily
occurrence, a constant reminder that a full-blown conflict is always
a threat.
Further unnerving India, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, said to
be close to TTP-JA, has announced the creation of a South Asia wing
of al Qaeda, threatening to stage attacks on countries across the
subcontinent.
The new group's first major attack was a botched attempt in
September to hijack a Pakistani warship and attack a U.S. navy
vessel at a base near the port city of Karachi.
On Tuesday, India's navy withdrew two warships from the eastern port
of Kolkata after intelligence agencies warned of an attack on the
port and the city.
 (Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani in New Delhi, Writing by
Maria Golovnina; Editing by John Chalmers and Jeremy Laurence)
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