U.S. & World

LAHORE, Pakistan (CBS) ― Pakistani media reported Thursday that two blasts had occurred in a busy market in the northern city of Peshawar, killing at least five people, CBS News reports, and leaving at least 20 people injured.

A senior government official in Islamabad who spoke on condition of anonymity told CBS News, "the Peshawar attack bears the handprint of Baitullah Mehsud." No one immediately claimed responsibility.

The explosions came a day after a suicide attack on police and intelligence agency offices in the eastern city of Lahore killed about 30 people and wounded more than 300 others.

Details were sketchy but the Dawn television network showed video of people carrying a bleeding man from a shop after the blasts and firefighters hosing down a burning building.

Dawn says at least 20 people were wounded. It says the blasts occurred at the Qissa Khawani market in the early evening.

Earlier Thursday, the Taliban in Pakistan claimed responsibility for the devastating attack a day earlier in the eastern city of Lahore, saying it was revenge for the army's current offensive against the militants.

Hakimullah Mehsud, a deputy to Pakistani Taliban chief, Baitullah Mehsud, told The Associated Press in a telephone call that Wednesday's suicide attack in Lahore "was in response to the Swat operation where innocent people have been killed."

A senior Taliban leader in North Waziristan, a lawless area near the border with Afghanistan, told CBS News' Sami Yousafzai on Thursday that plans were in place for the militant group to carry out a series of "spectacular" attacks across Pakistan in response to the military's Swat operation.

"Pakistani intelligence's cooperation with the U.S. CIA is getting broader in the region against the Taliban. (U.S.) Drone attacks are increasing with the help of Pakistani intelligence. That is why in Lahore yesterday the Taliban attacked the intelligence office," the Taliban commander, who asked not to be identified, told CBS News by phone.

He spoke to Yousafzai hours before the blasts in Peshawar.

CBS News' Farhan Bokhari first reported Wednesday, just hours after the huge bomb blast rocked Lahore, that Pakistani intelligence officials, after questioning two men detained at the scene, were virtually positive Mehsud was behind the attack.

A senior security official also told Bokhari that three men arrested in Islamabad in the wake of the blast were suspected of links to the attack, and possibly of plotting a similar act in the capital city.

About 30 people were killed and at least 250 wounded when gunmen fired and lobbed grenades at offices of the police and top intelligence agency then detonated an explosive-laden van in Lahore.

A little-known group calling itself the Taliban Movement in Punjab also claimed responsibility for the attack, but a government minister told Bokhari on Wednesday the blast was "certainly linked to Baitullah Mehsud."

CBS News security correspondent Bob Orr reported about a year ago that U.S. intelligence officials were increasingly concerned that Mehsud could eclipse even Osama bin Laden as a threat to America.

The U.S. recently announced a $5 million bounty on Mehsud's head. Asked about it, he said he would be happy to "embrace martyrdom."

The government announced bounties for 21 Taliban leaders in northwestern Pakistan, after blaming militants for Wednesday's assault.

The attack in Pakistan's second-largest city, the capital of the Punjab province, was far from the restive northwest Afghan border region where the Taliban have established strongholds in Swat and other places and have faced a month-old military offensive.

It also was the third deadly assault since March in Lahore, a major intellectual and cultural center in Pakistan, following deadly assaults on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team and a police academy.

Officials fear militants may be choosing targets there to make the point that nowhere is beyond their reach.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said militants were striking out because they were losing the fight with government forces battling to uproot extremists in the northwestern valley and tribal areas near Afghanistan.

(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)