KABUL - Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of Pakistan's Taliban, appeared in a video Monday threatening attacks against the U.S. three months after American and Pakistani officials believed he died in a U.S. missile strike.
Mehsud's emergence occurred as a suicide bomber attacked the gate to a CIA base where seven agency employees were killed last December. The Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for that bombing, and Monday's attack could have been aimed at showing that the group was back in business despite months of setbacks from relentless U.S. missile strikes and a Pakistani military offensive.
U.S. and Pakistani officials had been confident until recently that the ruthless, 30-year-old Mehsud had been killed in a January missile strike along the boundary between South Waziristan and North Waziristan - tribal areas along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan where Islamist militant groups operate with near impunity.
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A video posted on militant websites and broadcast Monday by Pakistani television showed Mehsud seated between two masked, armed men, speaking in Pashto with English subtitles.
"Praise be to God, on the 4th day of April 2010, I give good news to the Muslim world about being alive and healthy," Mehsud said.
He said Taliban fighters "have penetrated the terrorist America" and will "give extremely painful blows to the fanatic America."
The missile strike that was believed to have killed Mehsud took place about 10 days after the release of a video showing the militant leader seated next to Jordanian doctor Humam Khalil al-Balawi, who carried out the Dec. 30 suicide attack against the CIA base at Camp Chapman in eastern Afghanistan.
As the video showing Mehsud alive appeared Monday, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-filled truck outside the gate of the CIA base in Afghanistan's Khost province.
The Afghan Interior Ministry said one civilian was killed and two others were wounded.
US Toll in Afghanistan
• Deaths: 965
• Wounded: 5,676
Source: Department of Defense
