The massive explosions targeted new recruits for Pakistan’s Frontier Constabulary in Charsadda district, about an hour’s drive from the capital, Islamabad. The recruits had just finished morning prayers and were boarding buses that would take them on home leave, said Jehanzeb Khan, a senior police officer in Charsadda.
The Pakistani Taliban, a homegrown offshoot of the Afghan militant group, said it had carried out the attack to avenge bin Laden’s killing by U.S. commandos, according to news services.
Pakistanis already have condemned the U.S. raid as an embarrassing violation of territorial sovereignty, and the death of scores of Pakistanis in an apparent attempt at retaliation could result in even more anti-U.S. sentiment here.
“This was the first revenge for Osama’s martyrdom. Wait for bigger attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, said by telephone, according to Agence France-Presse.
A different Taliban official, however, speaking anonymously to The Washington Post, disputed his organization’s statement. The official said the attack was intended to punish the Pakistani military for a recent offensive in the Mohmand region of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt, where the Taliban, al-Qaeda and a potpourri of other militant organizations are based. Charsadda borders the the Mohmand region.
The two claims could not be immediately reconciled; it is possible that the attack was a response to both the Mohmand offensive and bin Laden’s death.
Police said the first blast occurred just before 6 a.m., when a bomber approached the training center on foot. The explosion drew dozens more recruits into the street, police said, leaving them exposed and vulnerable when a motorcycle bomber passed minutes later and detonated his explosives.
Bashir Ahmed Bilour, a government minister for the surrounding Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, said 69 recruits and 11 civilians had been killed. At least 140 people were injured, he said.
The Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary force made up of men from Pakistan’s border regions, receives training from U.S. special forces. More than 800 recruits graduated from their one-year course on May 5, and they were eagerly lining up to depart on home leave Friday morning, authorities said.
The Taliban accuse the U.S.–backed government and security forces of being puppets in what they deem an American war against Muslims. They, along with other Islamist insurgents, have vowed to avenge bin Laden’s death with attacks on state installations.
“What did they achieve? Who was killed? I ask you and those who claimed responsibility,” Bilour said to reporters at the scene. “Did they kill Americans or young innocent recruits who were about to leave for their native towns?”
Bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in the military-dominated city of Abbottabad, which is also in Pakistan’s northwest, in an operation that has intensified suspicions in Washington that Pakistan’s military harbors militants.
Two men who lived with bin Laden and were killed in the raid, Arshad and Tariq Khan, have been linked by property records and identity cards to Charsadda. But Pakistani authorities have cast doubt on the authenticity of those documents.
Officials from both countries say Pakistan was not told about or involved in the raid, and Pakistani officials have said the unilateral operation could endanger bilateral relations.
“Now those who did the Abbottabad operation should come and see how we are killed and our kids’ blood is shed,” Bilour said Friday. “We are not a commodity that can be purchased.”
Pakistan’s powerful army and intelligence chiefs are scheduled to brief parliament on the bin Laden case Friday in a private session.
Many militant attacks in recent years have targeted Pakistani security forces and soldiers, more than 3,000 of whom have been killed in counterinsurgency operations in the northwest. The Pakistani army recently relaunched an offensive in Mohmand, where several previous operations have failed to flush out militants.
After Friday’s blasts, the area outside the training center gate was littered with broken glass, body parts, bloodstains and single shoes.
“I lost many friends,” said one bleeding 20-year-old recruit, who declined to give his name. “What did we do wrong?”
Brulliard reported from Islamabad.
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com
Brulliard reported from Islamabad.
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com
