American cities now our main targets, says terrorist leader

And just hours after the nine-minute video was broadcast on Pakistani TV, a suicide bomber yesterday blew up a vehicle full of explosives outside a CIA base near the country's border with Afghanistan.

In his video message, Mehsud, the Pakistan Taliban leader, said: "From now on, the main targets ... are American cities. The good news will be heard within some days or weeks." The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremists websites, said the tape appeared to have been made April 4.

The footage was broadcast one day after his group took responsibility for an attempted car bombing in New York City's Times Square last weekend. The claim is disputed by US officials.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the force had no evidence to support the claim and noted the same group had falsely taken credit for previous attacks on US soil.

Late last year, the insurgent network claimed a role in the suicide attack which killed seven CIA employees at Camp Chapman in eastern Afghanistan, the scene of yesterday's bombing.

Afghanistan's Interior Ministry said one civilian was killed and two others were wounded in yesterday's attack. A US Army spokesman said only the bomber died but two other people were wounded.

US Army Major Justin Platt, spokesman for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team at nearby Salerno Camp, said the bomber blew himself up in an area where vehicles are screened before entering.

"The explosion was very strong and thick smoke covered the sky afterward," said Wali Mohammad, 17, who was working at a construction site nearby.

Although the New York claim remains in dispute, the series of events – including a second attack on the CIA base in four months – indicated the Pakistan Taliban remains active despite relentless US missile attacks and Pakistani military offensives in the last six months which have pushed it from once-secure sanctuaries along the border.

US and Pakistani officials had thought Mehsud was killed or seriously injured in January when US missiles targeted tribal regions along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

In Washington last week, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said he had seen "no evidence" that Mehsud "is operational today or is executing or exerting authority over the Pakistan Taliban which he once did."

In the video, however, Mehsud – seated between two masked gunmen –boasts of being "alive and healthy."

In another development, US missiles have killed four suspected militants in a Pakistan tribal region near the Afghan border, American intelligence officials said.

The three missiles were fired minutes apart at a moving vehicle in the Marsi Khel area in North Waziristan, according to the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Pakistani guilty of mumbai terror

A Pakistani man has been convicted of gunning down dozens of people during the November 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai.

Mohammed Ajmal Kasab is the lone survivor out of 10 gunmen who killed 166 people over three days.

Prosecutors said he and an accomplice killed 58 people and wounded 104 others at one of Mumbai's busiest railway stations.

Judge ML Tahiliyani acquitted two Indians who had been accused of helping plot the attacks. India blames a Pakistan-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, for the attack.

Sentencing was set for tomorrow, when Kasab faces a possible death penalty.

One of the memorable moments in the trial came in July, when Kasab made a surprise confession which he later retracted.