Pakistan ? The Taliban claimed responsibility today for recent suicide attacks in Pakistan, including the assassination of a leading moderate cleric and the bombing of a Peshawar hotel frequented by foreigners.

Thousands of people were expected to gather today for the funeral of Sarfraz Naeemi, whose death in a blast at his seminary in Lahore triggered a wave of anger and revulsion toward militants in the country’s cultural capital.

Police said the bombing was a targeted assassination of the cleric, who recently had condemned suicide attacks as un-Islamic, denounced the Taliban as murderers and “a stigma on Islam.” He also threw his support behind the military operation against the Taliban in the Swat Valley region.