Twin explosions struck a paramilitary training center in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 70 people and wounding scores of others in the bloodiest attack in the country in the wake of a US Special Forces raid targeting Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden, Al Arabiya TV reported.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed the deadly bombings, calling it the first revenge for the death of Bin Laden and threatened bigger attacks to come.
“This was the first revenge for Osama’s martyrdom. Wait for bigger attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Agence-France Presses by telephone from an undisclosed location.
The killing of Bin Laden in a US Navy SEALs raid at his compound near Islamabad on May 2 raised fears that Pakistan would face a new wave of attacks by Al Qaeda and its affiliates, who are fighting to topple the US-backed government.
The attacks took place in the Shabqadar area, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Peshawar, the main city in the northwest region where militants linked to the Taliban and Al Qaeda have repeatedly attacked government forces.
“The death toll is now 70, it was a suicide bombing,” said Nisar Sarwat, the police chief in the town of Charsadda, where the attack at the gates at the Frontier Constabulary took place, according to Reuters.
Of the dead, 65 of them were paramilitary recruits on their way out of the academy on leave.
Police said there was another explosion around the same time but it had not been determined if that, too, was caused by a suicide bomber. A Reuters photographer saw body parts and blood scattered in the area.
The attacks were the deadliest in Pakistan since November 5 when a suicide bomber killed 68 people at a mosque in the northwest area of Darra Adam Khel.
More than 4,300 people have been killed in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan in the last four years since government forces raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad in 2007.
Many of the attacks in Pakistan have targeted security forces, including young cadets or recruits.
Pakistan’s civilian government said Thursday it would review counter-terrorism cooperation with the United States as it comes under growing domestic pressure to penalize Washington for the Bin Laden raid.
The attacks showed the extent of the task facing US Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, as he prepares to embark on a mission to shore up badly strained ties with Washington’s fractious ally in South Asia.
Washington did not inform Islamabad that an elite team of Navy SEALs had stealthily come by helicopter to the garrison town of Abbottabad from secret locations in Afghanistan until the commandos had cleared Pakistani airspace after a 40-minute operation, carrying with them Bin Laden’s corpse.
The covert nighttime raid has plunged Pakistani politics into turmoil with both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani facing calls to resign amid growing anti-American sentiment.
Pakistanis have been outraged at the perceived impunity of the US raid, while asking whether their military was too incompetent to know Bin Laden was living close to a major forces academy, or, worse, conspired to protect him.
Washington is pressing Islamabad to investigate how Bin Laden and several wives and children managed to live for five years under the noses of its military in a town just 35 miles north of the capital. Abbottabad houses Pakistan’s national military academy, and is a hill station where many retired military and intelligence personnel live.
One of Bin Laden’s wives told investigators he lived in Pakistan for more than seven years, security officials said. His earlier abode was in a hamlet.
(Abeer Tayel, an editor at Al Arabiya
The Pakistani Taliban claimed the deadly bombings, calling it the first revenge for the death of Bin Laden and threatened bigger attacks to come.
“This was the first revenge for Osama’s martyrdom. Wait for bigger attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Agence-France Presses by telephone from an undisclosed location.
The attacks took place in the Shabqadar area, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Peshawar, the main city in the northwest region where militants linked to the Taliban and Al Qaeda have repeatedly attacked government forces.
“The death toll is now 70, it was a suicide bombing,” said Nisar Sarwat, the police chief in the town of Charsadda, where the attack at the gates at the Frontier Constabulary took place, according to Reuters.
Of the dead, 65 of them were paramilitary recruits on their way out of the academy on leave.
Police said there was another explosion around the same time but it had not been determined if that, too, was caused by a suicide bomber. A Reuters photographer saw body parts and blood scattered in the area.
The attacks were the deadliest in Pakistan since November 5 when a suicide bomber killed 68 people at a mosque in the northwest area of Darra Adam Khel.
More than 4,300 people have been killed in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan in the last four years since government forces raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad in 2007.
Many of the attacks in Pakistan have targeted security forces, including young cadets or recruits.
Pakistan’s civilian government said Thursday it would review counter-terrorism cooperation with the United States as it comes under growing domestic pressure to penalize Washington for the Bin Laden raid.
The attacks showed the extent of the task facing US Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, as he prepares to embark on a mission to shore up badly strained ties with Washington’s fractious ally in South Asia.
Washington did not inform Islamabad that an elite team of Navy SEALs had stealthily come by helicopter to the garrison town of Abbottabad from secret locations in Afghanistan until the commandos had cleared Pakistani airspace after a 40-minute operation, carrying with them Bin Laden’s corpse.
The covert nighttime raid has plunged Pakistani politics into turmoil with both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani facing calls to resign amid growing anti-American sentiment.
Pakistanis have been outraged at the perceived impunity of the US raid, while asking whether their military was too incompetent to know Bin Laden was living close to a major forces academy, or, worse, conspired to protect him.
Washington is pressing Islamabad to investigate how Bin Laden and several wives and children managed to live for five years under the noses of its military in a town just 35 miles north of the capital. Abbottabad houses Pakistan’s national military academy, and is a hill station where many retired military and intelligence personnel live.
One of Bin Laden’s wives told investigators he lived in Pakistan for more than seven years, security officials said. His earlier abode was in a hamlet.
(Abeer Tayel, an editor at Al Arabiya
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