Pakistan lawmakers: no repeat of bin Laden raid

Pakistan lawmakers pledged Saturday there must be no repeat of the US commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden and said drone strikes targeting terrorists near the border with Afghanistan must end.

The strongly-worded message came after a parliamentary session lasting more than 10 hours, in which MPs debated the "situation arising from unilateral US action in Abbottabad," north of Islamabad, where the Al-Qaeda chief was found and shot dead on May 2 after a decade-long manhunt.

The statement came hours after Pakistan's Taliban claimed responsibility for a double suicide bombing on a paramilitary police training centre that killed 89 people in the first major attack to avenge bin Laden's death.

Students protest against the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden and US drone attacks, in Lahore
Students protest against the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden and US drone attacks, in Lahore

Around 140 people were wounded, 40 of them critically, in the attack -- the deadliest this year in Pakistan, where the government is in crisis over the death of the man blamed for the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

Pakistan's intelligence chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha, chief of military operations and deputy chief of air staff, briefed lawmakers before they issued a resolution condemning Washington's unilateral action at bin Laden's compound.

They called on the government "to appoint an independent commission on the Abbottabad operation, fix responsibility and recommend necessary measures to ensure that such an incident does not recur".

Parliament also threatened to withdraw logistical cooperation for US troops based in Afghanistan and hit out at the drone strikes.

"Such drone attacks must be stopped forthwith, failing which the government will be constrained to consider taking necessary steps including withdrawal of (the) transit facility allowed to NATO," the resolution said.

Most supplies and equipment required by foreign soldiers in Afghanistan are shipped through Pakistan's main northwestern border crossing. Supply convoys are frequently attacked by insurgents.

US drone strikes doubled last year, with more than 100 drone operations killing over 670 people, according to an AFP tally, and the CIA has said the covert programme has severely disrupted Al-Qaeda's leadership.

In the fallout over the bin Laden raid and in another sign of damaged ties with wary ally Washington, an official said that Pakistan's senior military officer General Khalid Shameem Wynne had cancelled a visit to the US.

Pakistan has vowed to review intelligence cooperation after the embarrassing revelation that bin Laden had been living less than a mile from one of its military academies in Abbottabad, prompting claims of official collusion.

A White House spokesman said Friday that the US had been granted access to three of the Al-Qaeda leader's widows after it asked Islamabad to help counter growing mistrust by allowing American interrogators to speak to them.

The women were apprehended during the raid. CNN said they were interviewed as a group despite the US desire to question them separately, and were openly "hostile" to the US officials.

Friday's attack in northwest Pakistan saw explosions target newly trained paramilitary cadets, dressed in civilian clothes, who were getting into buses for a 10-day vacation, 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.

The bombers blew themselves up in Shabqadar, outside the biggest Frontier Constabulary (FC) training centre in the northwest.

The town is close to Mohmand, which is in the lawless tribal belt that Washington has branded the headquarters of Al-Qaeda and where CIA drones carry out missile strikes on Taliban and other Islamist militant commanders.

Bashir Ahmed Bilour, senior minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said 80 people had been killed, including 69 FC men, making it the deadliest attack in Pakistan since July 9, 2010, when bombers killed 105 people in Mohmand.

Washington called it a "heinous" attack and said the killings underlined the need for the two countries to co-operate against terrorism.

Doctors in Peshawar's main Lady Reading hospital said they were struggling to save the lives of more than 40 critically wounded paramilitary policemen and had declared a state of emergency to cope with the scale of the casualties.

Later Friday, a US drone fired two missiles into a vehicle in Pakistan's tribal district of North Waziristan, killing at least three militants in a Taliban and Al-Qaeda stronghold, officials said.

Five NATO oil tankers carrying fuel for international troops in Afghanistan were destroyed when a bomb planted beneath one of them exploded, starting a fire, as they were parked at a terminal in Khyber province.

The Taliban last week threatened to attack security forces to avenge bin Laden's killing.

There has been little public protest in support of bin Laden in a country where more people have been killed in bomb attacks in the past four years than the nearly 3,000 who died in Al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 strikes on the US.

But Pakistanis have been outraged at the perceived impunity of the US raid, while asking whether their military was too incompetent to know bin Laden was living close to a major forces academy, or, worse, conspired to protect him.

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