MINGORA, Dec 24: A man named Maulana Sirajuddin on Monday accepted the responsibility for the Sunday’s suicide attack.

A local paper quoted him as saying that the bombing had been carried out to avenge the destruction of a seminary and the house of a cleric in Charbagh area.

He accused the security forces of destroying Qari Mushtaq’s residence and said that local militants accepted Baitullah Mehsud as their central Amir and awaited his orders.

A foreign news agency, meanwhile, quoted Maulana Mohammaed Umer, spokesman for the newly-formed Tehrik-i-Taliban as saying that the Sunday attack “was just a warning shot ... the government should expect more if our demands are not met”. The Tehrik is a coalition of militant groups committed to waging a ‘holy war’ against the government.

Media reports last week said the group had issued a 10-day ultimatum to the army to end its operation in the Swat Valley.

Maulana Umer told AP that the government had ignored the ultimatum, which expired on Monday. The group had also called for the removal of military checkpoints in the tribal areas and withdrawal of the army.

Meanwhile, security forces secured the tourist resorts of Kalam and Bahrain in the Swat valley, restoring the civil administration.

People of Kalam told this correspondent that police had regained the control of the police station in Kalam, about 100 kms north of Mingora.

Apart from other areas, militants had taken Kalam, Bahrain and Madyan towns in the district. The towns were vacated a month ago and they have since been without the civil administration.

“Now all the police stations have become functional except a few small posts,” said a police official.

The ISPR confirmed that the areas had been secured and civil administration was looking after day-to-day work.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the Sunday’s suicide bombing rose to 13 when two of the injured persons died in hospital and a bullet-riddled body was found in nearby fields.

A police official told Dawn that the suicide bombing was followed by firing from some panicked soldiers and some civilians were killed.

He said it was not clear how many people died in the bombing and how many in the firing.

One of the injured men admitted to the Saidu Sharif hospital told Dawn that he was riding a motorcycle and tried to flee after the blast when the security forces started firing. A visit to the place showed that windowpanes of most of the houses and shops in a radius of 500 metres had been shattered by the blast.

The army’s helicopter gunships attacked some hideouts of a former militant commander, Khan Khitab, at Koza Bamkhela in Matta tehsil. Khan Khitab had been killed during an operation a month ago.

Meanwhile, curfew restrictions will be relaxed from 7am till 6pm in Mingora and other parts of Swat on Tuesday.