CHARSADDA, Pakistan — The Pakistani Taliban boasted Friday it had taken its “first revenge” for the killing of Usama bin Laden by US special forces, with the massacre of 80 people in a double suicide bombing at a paramilitary police training center in Pakistan’s tribal northwest.
Around 140 people were wounded, 40 of them fighting for their lives, in the deadliest attack this year in the nuclear-armed country where the government is deep in crisis over the killing of the al Qaeda chief by US forces May 2, AFP reported.
Meanwhile, a US drone fired two missiles into a vehicle in Pakistan’s tribal district of North Waziristan, killing at least three militants. It was the fourth such attack reported in Pakistan’s tribal areas on the Afghan border since the bin Laden operation.
The suicide attack was swiftly condemned by foreign governments and the Pakistani leadership.
Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari strongly condemned the “dastardly” attack, and said the government and people were determined to defeat terrorism, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
British foreign secretary William Hague said, “These attacks were cowardly and indiscriminate, killing many innocent bystanders and targeting those who serve to protect Pakistan. They prove once again that such extremist groups have no regard for the value of human life.”
In the fallout over the unilateral raid and in another sign of damaged ties with Washington, an official said Pakistan’s senior military officer Gen. Khalid Shameem Wynne had canceled a visit to the US, AFP reported.
Friday’s explosions detonated at Charsadda’s Shabqadar district in northwestern Pakistan as newly trained paramilitary cadets, dressed in civilian clothes, were getting into buses for a 10-day leave, police said.
“This was the first revenge for Usama’s martyrdom. Wait for bigger attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said.
Under Hakimullah Mehsud, who replaced Baitullah Mehsud as leader of the group after he was killed by a US missile in 2009, the Pakistani Taliban has been seen as increasingly inspired by al Qaeda in waging mass-casualty attacks.
The bombers blew themselves up outside the biggest Frontier Constabulary (FC) training center in the northwest, where Taliban and al Qaeda-linked militants repeatedly attack security forces.
The town is close to Mohmand, which is in the lawless tribal belt that Washington has branded the headquarters of al Qaeda and where CIA drones carry out missile strikes on Taliban and other Islamist militant commanders.
Ahmad Ali, a wounded paramilitary policeman, recalled the horror when the explosions turned a festive Friday morning into a bloodbath.
“I was sitting in a van waiting for my colleagues. We were in plain clothes and we were happy we were going to see our families,” he said from Shabqadar hospital. “I heard someone shouting ‘Allah Akbar’ and then I heard a huge blast. I was hit by something in my back shoulder. In the meantime I heard another blast and I jumped out of the van. I felt that I was injured and bleeding.”
Bashir Ahmed Bilour, senior government minister for Khyber Paktunkhwa province, said 80 people had been killed, including 69 paramilitary police and 11 civilians, making it the deadliest attack in Pakistan since July 9, 2010 when bombers killed 105 people in Mohmand.
Doctors in Peshawar’s main Lady Reading hospital said they were struggling to save the lives of more than 40 critically wounded paramilitary policemen and had declared a state of emergency to cope with the scale of the casualties.
“Both attacks were suicide attacks. The first suicide bomber came on a motorcycle and detonated his vest among the Frontier Constabulary men,” the police chief of the Charsadda district, Nisar Khan Marwat, said. “When other FC people came to the rescue to help their colleagues, the second bomber came on another motorcycle and blew himself up.”
The Taliban last week threatened to attack security forces to avenge bin Laden’s killing in a US helicopter raid north of the capital Islamabad.