Pakistan defends attack on school

PAKISTAN: Pakistan's military defended its deadly missile strike on an Islamic school, saying it was necessary to prevent terrorist trainees from escaping. Critics said the government used disproportionate force in the attack, which killed 80 people.

Tribal elders said Monday's raid in the Bajur district near the Afghan border set back peace efforts in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region, and a prominent human rights group demanded an independent inquiry.

Abdul Aziz Khan, head of Bajur's council of tribal chiefs, on Wednesday demanded a guarantee there would be no further attacks, saying, "without it we will not begin talks with the government." At stake is a deal to stamp out militancy like that reached in September with tribal chiefs in North Waziristan.

Musharraf's government has been roundly condemned in Pakistan for the attack on the school in the village of Chingai, three kilometers (two miles) from the poorly demarcated border separating Pakistan from Afghanistan's Kunar province, where U.S. troops have repeatedly battled al-Qaida militants.

Tribespeople and Islamic leaders denounced the raid as an illegitimate attack on innocent students and teachers and threatened retaliation.

Pakistan's chief army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, said the military had no option but to use helicopter gunships against the school, which he said was a front for a militant training camp, because attempts to arrest suspected trainee terrorists could have led to their escape.

"The biggest factor that contributes to success is surprise," Sultan told The Associated Press. "If we lost the surprise by 10 minutes, the operation (was) likely to fail."

Sultan said evidence included students in their 20s seen conducting exercises outside the school, school leaders who told rallies they were preparing suicide bombers and other intelligence he declined to specify.

New York-based Human Rights Watch urged the government to let independent investigators visit the area to determine who carried out the attack, how it was planned and executed, and who was killed.

Among those killed was Liaquat Hussain, a fugitive cleric who ran the school. The attack was launched after Hussain, an associate of al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, rejected government warnings to stop using the school as a terrorist training camp, Sultan said.

Another al-Zawahri lieutenant, Faqir Mohammed, left the school 30 minutes before the missile strike, according to an intelligence official.

A Pakistani official also claimed that al-Zawahri and al-Qaida's operational commander in Kunar province, London terror plot mastermind Abu Ubaida, had visited the school, but were not there during the attack.

Islamabad, Thursday, AP