80 killed as Taliban ‘avenge bin Laden’
US granted access to bin Laden’s wives
Pakistan’s Taliban yesterday 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 in the nuclear-armed country, where the government is deep in crisis over the killing of the Al-Qaeda chief by US forces on May 2.
In the fallout over the unilateral raid and in another sign of damaged ties with wary ally Washington, an official said Pakistan’s senior military officer General Khalid Shameem Wynne had cancelled a visit to the United States.
Pakistan has vowed to review intelligence cooperation after the embarrassing raid on its territory and the revelation that bin Laden had been living less than a mile from a military academy, prompting claims of official collusion.
But the United States said yesterday it had been granted access to the Al-Qaeda leader’s widows after it asked Islamabad to help counter growing mistrust by allowing US interrogators to question the three women found in his compound.
“The United States has gained access to Osama bin Laden’s wives held by Pakistan,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said, without offering further details.
CNN earlier reported that US intelligence agents had questioned the women, who were apprehended in the raid and then taken into Pakistani custody. One local Pakistani security official had denied that report.
CNN said the women were interviewed as a group despite Washington’s desire to question them separately, and were openly “hostile” to the US officials.
Yesterday’s explosions detonated in northwest 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 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.