Deadly Pakistan bomb attacks 'revenge for bin Laden'
The Pakistani Taliban said today it carried out the twin blasts at a Frontier Corps training centre that killed at least 69 people, nearly all of them recruits, to avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The attack is the bloodiest in Pakistan since the US raid that killed the al-Qaida chief on May 2.
Ahsanullah Ahsan, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, told The Associated Press in a phone call that its fighters conducted the attack on the Frontier Constabulary in Shabqadar in retaliation for bin Laden’s death.
A suicide bomber detonated at least one of the blasts at the main gate of the centre for the Frontier Constabulary, a poorly equipped, but front-line force in Pakistan’s battle against al Qaida and allied Islamist groups close to the Afghan border.
Like other branches of Pakistan security forces, it has received US funding.
Dozens of people were wounded, said police official Nisar Khan. He said a suicide bomber, a man in his late teens or early 20s, set off one blast.
Many recruits were boarding vehicles to go home for a short break at the end of a recent training session.
A vegetable seller at the site said some recruits were sitting in white minivans and others were loading luggage on top of the vehicles.
“There was a big blast,” he said. “I saw smoke and blood all around.”
September 11 mastermind bin Laden and at least four others were killed by US Navy SEALs who raided his compound in Abbottabad, a garrison city. Bin Laden is believed to have lived in the large house for up to six years.
Pakistani officials have denied knowing he was there but have criticised the American raid ordered by US president Barack Obama as a violation of their country’s sovereignty.
The explosions destroyed at least 10 vans the recruits were boarding.
Dr Abdul Hameed Afridi of Lady Rieding Hospital in Peshawar said 117 people have been treated at the hospital, including 40 with critical wounds.
About 3 to 4lbs of explosives were used in one explosion, said police officer Jahanzeb Khan. Ball bearings and nails were used in another, heightening the death toll, he said.
“The first blast occurred in the middle of the road, and after that there was a huge blast that was more powerful than the first,” said Abdul Wahid, a 25-year-old recruit whose legs were injured in the blasts.
He said he was knocked to the ground by the force of the explosions.
“After falling, I just started crawling and dragging myself to a safer place ... along the wall of a roadside shop,” he said.
