ISLAMABAD, 3 November 2006 — Pakistan Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said in Rawalpindi yesterday that the madrasa that was attacked by helicopter gunships on Monday resulting in the deaths of 80 people was a training camp for would-be suicide bombers.
According to Sultan, Taleban and Al-Qaeda experts were providing training on suicide bombing. “We had information that many young men were being trained for suicide bombing. They were being misled and brainwashed into carrying out suicide operations. We had confirmed reports that this madrasa was a suicide bombing training facility,” said Sultan while speaking to journalists.
President Pervez Musharraf stands isolated and helpless after Monday’s attack on Khar madrasa in Bajaur Agency. Reporters at the scene of the bombing on Monday reported bodies of young children, some as young as seven, being pulled from the debris.
Senior Pakistani journalists and diplomatic observers are of the opinion that the madrasa was targeted in a pre-emptive strike by an air-to-ground missile to jeopardize a recently arranged peace deal between tribal leaders and the federal government in Waziristan.
Mainstream newspapers too came out with similar conclusions in their editorials and opinion columns. The airstrike at the madrasa, they wrote, was a signal of disapproval at the federal government’s recently arranged settlement with tribesmen from South and North Waziristan.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch urged Pakistan to allow an independent inquiry into the bombing of the madrasa. The organization said the death toll was so high that the government had to provide a “credible” justification for the attack.
Residents of Bajaur Agency have denied army claims and insisted that all those killed were students who had just returned from month-long Ramadan holidays.
At a local hospital, Said Wali, a survivor of the attack who suffered burns to his face, said: “There were no Taleban or Al-Qaeda operatives. No one taught us methods of suicide bombing,” he said.
Another survivor Noor Muhammad at the same hospital could not speak because his face was totally burned.
Meanwhile, a bullet-riddled body lying in a stream was found in the vicinity of Khar yesterday. Local journalists told Arab News, he was a spy. “Spies get immediate punishment here,” they said.
The dead man was identified as Jan Muhammad, aged 40 and resident of Khar. Locals said Muhammad led an opulent life and always kept a satellite phone with him.
Tribesmen told one news agency that after the school attack, Khan ran from the scene when armed militants spotted him talking on a satellite phone. “People were removing debris when they saw him speaking on the phone. He panicked and ran away,” said Wazir Khan, a Chingai resident and restaurant chef aged in his 30s.
“Two or three masked gunmen chased him, shot him in the back and took his body to the river bed and left a message next to it under a stone.” The note, written in Pashto, accused Khan of spying for American and Pakistan troops in the area for a long time and being under observation.
An intelligence official said Khan was killed because of suspicions that he had provided information that led to Monday’s attack.
Meanwhile, top army commanders are to meet next week. Observers feel that the issue that will dominate at the meeting of corps commanders would be the anger that has swept the tribesmen along the Afghanistan border after the madrasa bombing.
The Mamond tribe in Bajaur region, in whose area the madrasa was situated, believe that it was the NATO-led US forces fighting Taleban in bordering Afghanistan who destroyed the madrasa. Many in Pakistan agree with them.
Retd. Gen. Hameed Gul told The News in an interview published yesterday that Musharraf had invited “big trouble by taking the blame (for the) American pre-emptive strike in Bajaur.”
“Like (Iraq’s) Saddam Hussain, Musharraf might be tried by a future regime for killing his own people,” he was quoted as saying.
