Washington: A video purportedly released by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing in Times Square in New York City, a Washington-based intelligence group said.
SITE, the intelligence group that monitors websites of Islamic terrorist outfit, said: "The video, posted to YouTube, contains an audio message attributed to Qari Hussein Mehsud, an official in TTP and organizer of its suicide bombing squad, played over anti-American images."
English subtitles were also provided, SITE said in a statement.
"The TTP states that the attack was in revenge for the recent deaths of Abu Umar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, killed in Iraq in April," the statement said.
The group also maintains that the attack was in "revenge for the Global American interference & terrorism in Muslim Countries, especially in Pakistan, SITE said.
There was no official verification of the claim being made by TTP, as revealed by SITE.
However, Pakistan's ISI has denied that TTP's claiming being responsible for the attack, by arguing that Pakistani Taliban has neither has the resources nor the global reach for such an attack.
"There is no credible way to prove that the Taliban have this kind of capacity to attempt such an attack in the heart of the United States," a Pakistani intelligence official told CBS News on condition of anonymity.
"A claim is far easier to make than to be carried out in real life," he was quoted as saying.
A Western diplomat in Islamabad also spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity.
"The Taliban have no demonstrated ability to strike in distant places. Structurally, they are far from being a global organization like al-Qaeda," the unnamed diplomat was quoted as saying.
Police today foiled a major terror attack by defusing an "amateurish" but potentially powerful crude car bomb in the heart of the New York city's famous tourist hub of Times Square, averting what could have been a "very deadly event" in the US.
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