AFP - Two suicide bombers killed Friday at least 80 people by detonating bombs in the middle of police cadets who went on leave in the north-west Pakistan, the Taliban is claiming a "first attack" in revenge for Osama bin Laden.
These insurgents, who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and making an extremely deadly bombing campaign in Pakistan, had promised reprisals against Islamabad and its security forces, whom they accuse of complicity in the deadly U.S. raid Ben Laden 11 days ago in the north.
At dawn, Shabqadar, a village northwest, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated his bomb when the cadets, who were dressed in their civilian clothes, were preparing to board the minibus to take them home for 10 days of leave, told AFP Nisar Khan Marwat, the police chief of District Charsadda.
The blast targeted a training center of the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary police unit responsible for monitoring the borders.
Then, just as police and rescue workers had gathered to help the wounded, another suicide bomber on a motorcycle led a second massacre.
"At least 80 people died, 69 members of the Frontier Constabulary, and 11 civilians," said Bashir Ahmed Bilour, minister without portfolio in the province of Pakhtunkhwa-Khyber, where the tragedy occurred. Over 140 others were injured, one quarantine between life and death, according to medical sources.
"I was sitting in a minibus and waited for my colleagues," he told AFP Ahmad Ali, a cadet injured contacted by telephone to the hospital."I heard someone shout 'Allah Akbar!" (God is greatest!) Before a loud explosion, "he recalls.
"Then I heard a second, so I jumped from the van, I was bleeding," recalls Ahmad Ali yet.
This is the deadliest attack this year in Pakistan.
"This is a first action to avenge the martyrdom of Osama, it was conducted by two of our fighters," said the telephone to AFP Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Movement of Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
"Expect more massive attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan," he threatened.
TTP, which has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda in 2007, is primarily responsible for the wave of more than 450 attacks, mostly suicide, who made more than 4.300 deaths across the country in nearly four years. In summer 2007, right after bin Laden himself, TTP had declared jihad on Islamabad for supporting Washington in its "war against terrorism."
Shabqadar is located near the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, Pakistani Taliban stronghold and the main sanctuary in the world of Al Qaeda.These areas are also the basis behind the Afghan Taliban, Haqqani Network in particular, bete noire of American soldiers who make up two thirds of international forces in Afghanistan.
Training camps of the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas are also used by Al Qaeda, who are then trained its suicide bombers who perpetrated the attacks or attempted to commit the United States or Europe, those of September 11, 2001 to those in London in 2005, to Madrid in 2004, and Times Square in New York in 2010.
It is in these mountainous border regions Experts believed ten years to find Bin Laden and not in the tidy town of Abbottabad garrison, two hours drive north of Islamabad.
That's when a lightning raid of 79 elite U.S. soldiers had dug in and killed the night of 1 to May 2
This unilateral operation performed under the auspices of the CIA who said he had not wanted to warn Islamabad for fear of leaks, has sparked a new skirmish between Washington and its allies.
The most senior U.S. officials asked Pakistan to investigate how could bin Laden into hiding for several years without complicity at the highest level in a garrison town populated by about 10,000 soldiers.Charges that Islamabad has described as "absurd", claiming that Pakistan is the country that pays the heaviest price for the "war against terrorism", with the bombing campaign of al-Qaeda loyalists.
Public opinion is overwhelmingly anti-American, whereas the U.S. has "imported" their war against Al Qaeda in Pakistan after an abortive campaign in Afghanistan.
Additional signs of defiance, Islamabad, Washington has threatened Thursday to reconsider its cooperation in fighting terrorism, and number 2 of the Pakistani Army, General Khalid Shameem Wynne, overturned Friday a planned visit to the United States "because of the climate prevail ".
