Suicide bombing kills at least 69 in Pakistan
CHARSADDA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed at least 69 people at a paramilitary force academy in northwest Pakistan Friday, in what Pakistani Taliban militants said was retaliation for the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in the country.
The first major bombing in Pakistan since bin Laden's death on May 2, it will reinforce fears of retaliation by al Qaeda and
allied groups, like the Pakistani Taliban, scattered around the world and loosely connected by ideology.
"It's the first revenge for the martyrdom of ... bin Laden. There will be more," Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
The bomber struck soon after dawn as the recruits were on their way out of the gates of the Frontier Constabulary academy in the town of Charsadda 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.
"The death toll is now 69, it was a suicide bombing," said Nisar Sarwat, town police chief.
Of the dead, 65 of them were recruits.
In the last major attack in Pakistan, an unstable South Asian country with a stagnant economy, two Taliban suicide bombers killed at least 41 people at a Sufi shrine on April 3 in a central city.
A new push by militants is the last thing Pakistani authorities need now.
The U.S. special forces operation to kill bin Laden embarrassed the Pakistani government and military, who are under pressure to explain how the al Qaeda chief lived undetected in the garrison town of Abbottabad, about a two hour drive from intelligence headquarters.
Security force camps, posts sand training grounds have been attacked repeatedly in Pakistan over recent years.
"WHOSE WAR?"
The scene outside the academy was typical -- pools of blood mixed with soldiers caps and shoes.
Body parts of the suicide bomber served as a reminder of the steady supply of Pakistanis willing to blow themselves up, inspired by al Qaeda's calls for holy war.
"As we were sitting in the buses there was a small blast. Within moments there was a second, big blast. I fell on the road and became unconscious," said soldier Shafeeq-ur-Rehman, whose leg was wounded in the blast.
As he spoke from a bed at Lady Reading hospital in the city of Peshawar, tearful people brought in dead and wounded relatives to the facility that has treated thousands of victims of the struggle between the army and militant groups.
"Why are we being killed? Whose war is this? What is our sin,"" asked an elderly man with a grey beard as the body of his teenage son was carried in on a stretcher.
The Pakistani Taliban launched their insurgency in 2007 after a military raid on Islamabad's Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, where militant leaders and others were holed up.
A series of army offensives against their bases in the lawless Pashtun tribal belt on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border has failed to break their resolve.
The killing of bin Laden in Pakistan is thought unlikely to weaken the Pakistan Taliban, while the United States has stepped up drone attacks on militants since bin Laden's death.
One of bin Laden's widows told investigators he lived in Pakistan for more than seven years, security officials said.
The United States, which has questioned Pakistan's reliability as a partner in the American war on militancy, provides billions of dollars of aid to Islamabad.
(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider and Mian Khursheed in Islamabad; Writing by Michael Georgy; Wditing by Robert Birsel)