80 killed as Taliban ‘avenge bin Laden’

Pakistan’s Taliban claimed their first major attack to avenge Osama bin Laden’s death as 80 people were killed in a double suicide bombing on a paramilitary police training centre.
Around 140 people were wounded, 40 of them fighting for their lives, in the deadliest attack this year.May 2.
In the fallout over the unilateral raid and in another sign of damaged ties with US, an official said that military officer General Khalid Shameem Wynne had cancelled a visit to the United States.
Pakistan has vowed to review intelligence cooperation and one security official denied a CNN report that US intelligence agents had interrogated three of bin Laden’s widows, who were apprehended in the raid and taken into custody.
CNN said the women were interviewed as a group despite America’s desire to question them separately, and were openly “hostile” to the US officials.
ISI was not immediately available to comment on the report.
Friday’s explosions detonated in Charsadda 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 Osama’s martyrdom. Wait for bigger attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
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 in Shabqadar, outside the biggest Frontier Constabulary (FC) training centre in the northwest, where Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants repeatedly attack security forces.
Government condemned the attack, as did Britain, pledging support for Islamabad in the fight against violent extremism.
Gul Momin, his leg in plaster, recalled the horror when the explosions turned a festive Friday morning into a bloodbath.
“We had been very happy,” he added. “I was loading my bag into the bus when the blast took place. I was seriously injured but wasn’t knocked out. I crawled towards a safe place, then I heard another huge blast.
“Everybody was lying on the ground and crying. I saw people lying in blood and dying. There were dead bodies and body parts. I can’t put it into words.”
Bashir Ahmed Bilour, senior minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said 80 people had been killed, including 69 FC men, 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,” said the police chief of the Charsadda district, Nisar Khan Marwat.
“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 in Abbottabad.