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| 80 die in air attack on Bajaur seminary |
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Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Most victims were Madrassa students; only three survive; Sultan says unspecified number of ‘miscreants’ killed in attack; protests held
Rahimullah Yusufzai
NAWAGAI, Bajaur Agency: Eighty men, mostly Madrassa students and teachers, were killed when a seminary in Mamond area of Bajaur agency, bordering Afghanistan, was attacked with missiles on Monday morning.
Requesting anonymity, a government administrator in Bajaur told The News that 83 people were residing in the seminary and only three survived the attack. He said the survivors were students and had suffered serious injuries.
Eyewitnesses said three missiles were fired from a pilot-less Predator plane at the seminary in Chenagai village. They claimed the drone had been flying over the area all night. Gunship helicopters and a plane were also seen flying over Mamond and Khar areas. They also claimed to have seen helicopters overflying Bajaur the previous three nights.
Villagers said they had recovered some bodies in one piece from the flattened building of the seminary, while in most cases only body organs and burnt flesh could be retrieved. They said 40 of the dead had been identified with great difficulty. “The bodies were burnt. Pieces of flesh were strewn all over the place. Rescuers were picking up body parts and putting them in bags and Chaddars,” said Mushtaq Yousafzai, a reporter for The News, who had spent the night in Bajaur in anticipation of the peace accord that was scheduled to be signed on Monday and was among the first to reach the site of the attack.
He said the Madrassa was completely destroyed and part of the adjacent mosque was damaged. He added that copies of Qur’aan and other Islamic literature were also destroyed in the attack.
Inayatur Rahman, who lived in a house close to the Madrassa, said the students started crying and shouted for help soon after the first missile attack around 5 am. A dispenser by training, he said, he was administering a drip to a patient at that time and was thrown about by the impact of the blast. He said three village elders who rushed toward the Madrassa after the first missile strike were probably killed by the two missiles that were subsequently fired at the seminary.
Villagers said most of the dead were students aged 15 to 25 years. They said the students mostly belonged to Bajaur, while some were from the nearby districts of Dir and Swat. They said the body of one student was dispatched to Swabi and another to Mohmand agency. Though nobody in the village confirmed it, there was a possibility that some of the students were Afghan refugees.
Among the dead was Maulana Liaquat, who ran the seminary and was a leader of the banned pro-Taliban organisation, Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-i-Mohammadi (TNSM), commonly referred to as the “black turbans” on account of the distinctive black turbans used by its members. There were also reports that three sons of MaulanaLiaquat were also killed. The TNSM Bajaur leader Maulana Faqir Mohammad, wanted for allegedly sheltering al-Qaeda and Taliban linked foreign militants, survived the attack as he wasn’t at the seminary at the time of the attack. He had attended a meeting at the seminary in the afternoon and left.
He later turned up at the destroyed site of the seminary and made a speech blaming the US for organising the attack and killing innocent Madrassa students. He also accused the Pakistan government of helping the US military to launch the missile attack. “We trusted our government and agreed to make peace and this is how it paid us back. This is a terrorist attack and the victims are students learning the Qur’aan,” he maintained.
A large gathering of people, including armed men, shouted anti-US and anti-Musharraf slogans and some wept when Maulana Faqir Mohammad announced that his friend and colleague Maulana Liaquat, contrary to earlier reports, had been killed in the attack. He also announced the death of his cousin Tahir in the missile strike. However, he strongly refuted reports that foreign militants were hiding in the Madrassa or that military training was being imparted there. “Show us the body of one foreigner killed in the attack. Show us one gun or bullet that has been found in the debris of the Madrassa,” he asked. Amid applause, he wished he too had been martyred along with the teachers and students and Huffaz at the Madrassa.
Earlier, Pakistan Army spokesman Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan said an unspecified number of “miscreants” were killed in the attack on the village by Pakistan Army. He said the attack was launched following reports that “miscreants” and wanted men had taken refuge in the village. He said the exact number of casualties wasn’t immediately known. He stressed the seminary was no longer being used for imparting religious lessons and was instead in use as a military training camp.
The village where the Madrassa is sited is a few kilometres from Damadola, where three houses were attacked in a US missile attack in January, killing 13 people. Claims by the Pakistan government that five al-Qaeda fighters were also killed in the aerial strike were never confirmed. It was said the attack was ordered, following reports that al-Qaeda deputy leader Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri was scheduled to visit Damadola that January night to have dinner with local tribal militants.
In Monday’s attack, the US television channel ABC News again reported that Dr Zawahiri was a likely target. It quoted an unidentified Pakistani intelligence official that there were credible reports Dr Zawahiri was hiding in the seminary. The ABC News also said a US Predator plane had fired the missiles that struck the seminary and caused all those deaths of militants.
According to Masood Khan, The News correspondent in Bajaur agency, hundreds of people rushed to Chenagai after the attack and helped retrieve the bodies from debris. Sirajul Haq, the NWFP Senior Minister and Jamaat-i-Islami provincial head, led collective Nimaz-e-Janaza of the deceased that was largely attended by the enraged tribesmen. Sahibzada Haroon Rashid, the JI/MMA MNA from Bajaur, resented the loss of civilian life in the strike and said students studying religion were killed without any justification.
The situation in Bajaur was tense as protestors took to the streets and blocked roads, including the main one linking Bajaur’s headquarters Khar with Mohmand Agency and Dir. The paramilitary forces blocked entry points to Bajaur Agency and media men and people from outside the agency were not allowed to enter Bajaur.
Impromptu protests meetings were held and the bazaars closed down to condemn the attack. Slogans were raised against the US and President Bush and President General Pervez Musharraf.
Addressing a press conference in Khar, Senator Maulana Abdur Rasheed, Maulana Muhammad Sadiq, the second MMA MNA from Bajaur, and PPP leader Akhunzada Chatan expressed anger over the air strike and termed it a provocation. They said innocent students were killed in the attack and it was a great tragedy. They said they would not only lodge their protest on floor of National Assembly and Senate but also force MMA members of parliament to tender their resignations. They said tribesmen were being targeted through a US-led conspiracy for their love to Islam. Intriguingly, the attack was launch on the very day when the pro-Taliban tribal militants led by Maulana Faqir Mohammad and the deceased Maulana Liaquat were scheduled to sign a peace agreement with the Pakistan government.
Under the agreement, the militants along with local tribes in Mamond area of Bajaur were to give an undertaking that foreigners would not be given refuge in the area and no cross-border infiltrations into neighbouring Afghanistan would be allowed.
The tribal elders in the area had already mediated the agreement and the government had released nine tribesmen including some militants as a gesture of goodwill and as part of confidence-building measures. The militants had held a public meeting in the area a day earlier and pledged to abide by the accord. They had denied harbouring foreign militants but at the same time reiterated their support for the Taliban resisting US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
