PAKISTAN: The Pakistani military launched its deadliest strike against Islamic militants yesterday, with an attack on a purported terrorist training camp near the Afghan border that killed about 80 people.
Helicopters fired missiles into a madrasa, or religious school, in Bajaur tribal region just before dawn, flattening the building and widely scattering debris and body parts.
"It was being misused for militant activities," said a military spokesman, Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan, who added that up to 100 men aged between 20 and 30 were inside, but no women or children.
However, angry local villagers said the casualties were not terrorists but innocent children and religious seminarians. Wailing men tugged corpses, including that of a seven-year-old boy, from the rubble in Chingai village. Thousands of mourners attended mass burials.
Several thousand people marched through Bajaur's main town, Khar, chanting: "Death to Musharraf" and "Death to Bush".
Jamaat Islami, a hardline Islamist party, condemned the attack as "brutal and barbaric".
Siraj ul-Haq, a minister in the provincial government, resigned in protest. "This is against Islam and the traditions of the area," he said. "This was an unprovoked attack on a madrasa. They were innocent people."
Among the dead was Maulana Liaqatullah, a radical pro-Taliban cleric with links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, Gen Sultan said, but the raid did not target any prominent al-Qaeda figures.
Instead, it was aimed at recalcitrant militants who had been warned to abandon the madrasa, he said. "They had been involved in activities in Pakistan and probably Afghanistan too."
Bajaur has come under close scrutiny this year for its links to al-Qaeda and Taliban militancy. The rugged district is considered a potential hiding place for al- Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, and lies across the border from Kunar, a mountainous Afghan province where United States forces have concentrated their hunt for fugitive terrorists.
Bajaur is considered the back door to Kunar. There have been several reported sightings of Arab fighters crossing into Pakistan for supplies.
In January a US drone aircraft hit a house in a village two miles from yesterday's target, where al- Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been expected. That attack missed the Egyptian militant but killed about 18 people.
Yesterday's strike marks the latest twist in Pakistan's struggle to quell rebellious tribesmen at home and satisfy allies abroad demanding more results in the fight against militant Islamists.
In September President Pervez Musharraf struck a controversial peace deal with militants in North Waziristan tribal region by agreeing to withdraw his troops to base. The military leader claimed the pact would cut cross-border infiltration into Afghanistan, but critics said it could create a militant safe haven.
A similar deal was in the offing in Bajaur and was due to be signed with tribal elders yesterday, only hours after the attack. Instead it has been replaced with an outpouring of grief and fury that will make any future compromise difficult. - (Guardian service)