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Avenging Osama: 10 targets in UK, US, France

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has issued chilling threats against 10 targets in Britain, America and France to avenge the killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden, who had evaded capture for a decade, was killed on May 2 in a top secret operation involving a small team of US Special Forces in Pakistan's garrison town of Abbottabad.

"We selected 10 targets to avenge the death of bin Laden," the Daily Mail quoted deputy Pakistani Taliban leader Wali-ur-Rehman, as saying in a videotape aired on Al Arabiya over the weekend.

The video showed Rehman, described as more sober and experienced than other TTP leaders, flanked by armed followers walking through rough mountain terrain.

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Avenging Osama: 10 targets in UK, US, France

"Soon you will see attacks against America and Nato countries, and our first priorities in Europe will be France and Britain," he warned.

Rehman did not elaborate on the 'selected targets', but said that the first revenge operation was the Taliban siege of a Pakistani naval base in Karachi last month - one of several setbacks the military has suffered since the May 2 US raid.   

The TTP, or Taliban Movement of Pakistan,  which swears allegiance to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, is blamed for many of the suicide bombings across the country and remains highly dangerous despite a series of army offensives against its strongholds in north-west Pakistan, on the Afghan border.

Avenging Osama: 10 targets in UK, US, France

It has not demonstrated an ability to stage sophisticated attacks in the West, the report said, adding that the TTP's one apparent bid to inflict carnage in the US failed.

The group claimed responsibility for the botched car bomb attack in New York's Times Square last year.

But American intelligence agencies take the TTP seriously, and the group was later added to the country's list of foreign terrorist organisations.