Khar, Pakistan – Thousands of pro-Taliban tribesmen denounced Pakistan’s air raid on a seminary that killed 80 people, accusing the U.S. of involvement in the attack and vowing Tuesday to send waves of suicide bombers to retaliate.
A security official said al-Qaeda’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, and the purported London airline bomb mastermind had both visited the religious school in the tribal-dominated northern Bajur district several times, but they weren’t there at the time of Monday’s raid.
Pakistan’s military said the school – known as a madrassa – was destroyed by missile-firing helicopters because it was preparing dozens of students to launch attacks in this South Asian nation and neighboring Afghanistan.
The carnage inflicted in the Bajur village of Chingai and conflicting claims over whether the victims were trainee militants or madrassa students set the scene for widespread unrest in Pakistan, a Muslim majority country of more than 150 million people whose military-run government is a close U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.
In Bajur’s main town of Khar, near Chingai, 20,000 tribesmen, many brandishing firearms, railed against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and President Bush and called for their deaths.
“God is great!” “Death to Bush! Death to Musharraf!” and “Anyone who is a friend of America is a traitor!” they chanted.
Local pro-Taliban elder Inayatur Rahman told the crowd he had prepared a “squad of suicide bombers” to target Pakistani security forces in the same way militants are attacking in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“We will carry out these suicide attacks soon,” he said, asking the crowd if they approved.
The angry mob yelled back, “Yes!”
The rally also adopted a verbal resolution to stone to death anyone found spying for the Pakistan army or the U.S. government.
Smaller rallies were held in other Pakistani cities, including Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore, Multan, Quetta and the capital, Islamabad. Protesters from hard-line Islamic groups burned U.S. flags and effigies of Bush, called for toppling Musharraf’s government and denounced what they described as the killing of innocent students and teachers.
