"He said he was calling from Miranshah in North Waziristan and the telephone number used to make the call carried an area code common to the Waziristan tribal area and Bannu, the adjoining district in the North West Frontier Province, " the paper said.

BBC: Unknown Pakistan group claims India's Pune bombing

So Nynex, hardly the most popular local telephone company in America, knew it was in for a scrap when it recently unveiled a plan to deprive some Manhattanites of their treasured 212 area code--arguably the only local telephone code that is recognised from Tokyo to Tomsk.

ECONOMIST: The sexiest code on earth