Pakistani Taliban militants have claimed the responsibility for the attempt to detonate a bomb at the New York Time Square, the Long War Journal said citing a Taliban website.
"This attack is a revenge for the great and valuable martyred leaders of mujahideen," Qari Hussain Mehsud, the top bomb maker for the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, said.
Qari Hussain said he takes "fully responsibility for the recent attack in the USA." Qari Hussain made his satetment on an audiotape accompanied by images that was released on a YouTube website that calls itself the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel.
The Long War Journal also quoted Qari Hussain as saying that the attack was a "revenge for the Global American interference and terrorism in Muslim countries, especially in Pakistan for Lal Masjid operation," referring to the July 2008 Pakistani military assault on Islamists holed up in the Red Mosque in Islamabad, as well as Predator strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas and the arrest and detention of Pakistani scientist Aifa Siddique.
The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said earlier the day the attempt as a one-off event and was considered by the U.S. government as a potential terrorist attack and perceived very seriously.
New York police defused a bomb found inside a sport utility vehicle that caused the evacuation of people from Times Square on Saturday night.
The police chief Raymond Kelly said the device was in a special storage facility and posed no threat.
New York police cordoned off crowded Square Garden on Saturday night evacuating people from the area after detecting a suspicious vehicle that contained an improvised explosive device, ABC television channel reported.
The channel reported earlier, citing various sources that witnesses saw a smoke coming out of a Nissan Pathfinder parked in New York's theater district and called the police.
The car was, however, identified later as "a Land Rover with a Connecticut or unmatched license plate."
One of the witness said, according to ABC, that the car was driven in Times Square, was left with its headlights on and the driver ran away from it.
A bomb squad was called in and it blew out the vehicles' windows with water cannons in order to check the car.
MOSCOW, May 2 (RIA Novosti)
