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80 Die In "Al Qaeda" Madrassa Raid
The Pakistan army claims that 80 al-Qaeda "militants" died in an air raid on a madrassa religious school near the border with Afghanistan.
According to the BBC, helicopter gunships attacked the school on Monday morning. Witnesses in the area - which is notoriously sympathetic to Afghanistan's Taliban fundamentalists - claim that the dead were innocent civilians. The army, however, says that the facility was a known al-Qaeda terror camp, which had been used to train "militants" for some time. Its occupants had ignored warnings from the military that the complex should close.
The Bajur region, where the raid took place, is remote and mainly tribal. Both Pakistani and US intelligence claim it is used as a staging ground for terror attacks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Media reports suggest that the occupants of the complex, whether al-Qaeda or otherwise, enjoyed a great deal of support in the village and surrounding countryside, as the missile raid provoked numerous protests against Pakistan's leader Pervez Musharraf and US President George Bush.
Local cleric Liaquat Hussain was killed in the raid. Hussain was part of a pro-Taliban group of preachers and was accused of hiding al-Qaeda terrorists.
