By Mian Khursheed
CHARSADDA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Suicide bombers killed 80 people at a Pakistani paramilitary academy on Friday in revenge for the death of Osama bin Laden, while Pakistan's spy chief was cited as saying he was ready to resign over the bin Laden affair which embarrassed the country.
U.S. special forces flew in from Afghanistan and found and killed the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks at his hideout in a northern Pakistani town on May 2.
Pakistan welcomed his death as a major step against militancy but was outraged by the secret U.S. raid, saying it was a violation of its sovereignty.
Bin Laden's presence in the town of Abbottabad, near the country's top military academy, has deepened suspicion in the United States that its ally Pakistan knew where he was.
Bin Laden's followers have vowed revenge for his death and the Pakistani Taliban said the Friday attack by two suicide bombers on a paramilitary academy in the northwestern town of Charsadda was their first taste of vengeance.
"There will be more," militant spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
The bombers struck as the recruits were going on leave and 65 of them were among the 80 dead. Pools of blood strewn with soldiers caps and shoes lay on the road outside the academy as the wounded, looking dazed with parts of their clothes ripped away by shrapnel, were loaded into trucks.
Shahid Ali, 28, was on his way to his shop when the bombs went off. He tried to help survivors. "A young boy was lying near a wrecked van asked me to take him to hospital. I got help and we got him into a vehicle," Ali said.
Hours after the bombing, a U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles at a vehicle in North Waziristan on the Afghan border, killing five militants, Pakistani security officials said.
It was the fourth drone attack since bin Laden was killed, inflaming another sore issue between Pakistan and the United States. Pakistan officially objects to these attacks, saying they violate its sovereignty and inflame public anger.
The United States says the drone strikes are carried out under an agreement with Pakistan and it has made clear it will go after militants in Pakistan when it finds them.
"LIVING LIKE A DEAD MAN"
Pakistan has long used militants as proxies to oppose the influence of its old rival India, and is widely believed to be helping some factions even while battling others.
But it has rejected as absurd suggestions its security agencies might have known where bin Laden was hiding.
But his discovery put Pakistan in the spotlight after years of dismissing suggestions he was hiding in the country, which depends heavily on U.S. aid.
The military and government have also drawn criticism at home, partly for not finding bin Laden but more for failing to detect or stop the surprise U.S. raid.
Military and intelligence chiefs gave parliament a closed-door briefing in which the head of the main Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency told legislators he was ready to take responsibility for any criminal failing, a minister said.
"If any of our responsibility is determined and any gap identified, that our negligence was criminal negligence, and there was an intentional failure, then we are ready to face any consequences," Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan told Express TV, citing ISI chief Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha.
Another member of parliament said Pasha told the assembly he did not want to "hang around" if parliament deemed him responsible.
"I am ready to resign," Riaz Fatyana quoted the ISI chief as saying.
Pasha also said killing bin Laden was a common U.S.-Pakistani goal but the Americans had breached Pakistan's sovereignty by going after him on their own.
The U.S. raid had taken 40 minutes and the Americans had used superior technology including stealth helicopters which Pakistan could not detect, the minister said.
The spy chief also told parliament bin Laden had been isolated and "living like a dead man," the minister said.
"We had already killed all his allies and so we had killed him even before he was dead. He was living like a dead man," Awan cited Pasha as saying.
U.S. officials are sifting through what they describe as a treasure trove of intelligence material seized in the raid on bin Laden's compound, trying to piece together elements of his life, including how he came to live in the garrison town of Abbottabad and who he met before his death.
Among the material was a stash of pornography but it was not known if bin Laden had acquired or viewed it, U.S. officials said.
U.S. authorities in Pakistan interviewed three of bin Laden's widows, detained by Pakistan in the compound after the U.S. assault, but gathered little new information, a U.S. official in Washington said.
Pakistan said it will repatriate the three widows and their children. One is from Yemen and the others from Saudi Arabia.
Since bin Laden's death, some U.S. lawmakers have called for suspending aid to Pakistan because of doubts about its commitment in going after violent Islamists.
But Washington stressed the importance of maintaining cooperation with Pakistan in the interests of battling militancy and bringing stability to neighbouring Afghanistan.
The United States has long pressed Pakistan to tackle Afghan Taliban taking shelter in Pakistani enclaves on the border, but the chance of greater cooperation with the United States appears to have been dented by the U.S. operation against bin Laden.
The chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff committee, General Khalid Shameem Wynne, cancelled a five-day visit to the United States beginning on May 22.
"The visit could not be undertaken under existing circumstances," a military official told Reuters.
He did not elaborate, but the decision to cancel the visit came as the cabinet defence committee said it was reviewing cooperation with the United States on counter-terrorism.
(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider, Haji Mujtaba, Rebecca Conway, Augustine Anthony and Izaz Mohmand in Pakistan, Mark Hosenball and David Alexander in Washington; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Michael Georgy)
