February 11, 2009 5:47 PM
- Text
Most Air Strike Victims Children, Teens
(AP)
Almost all of the 80 victims of last week's air strike on an Islamic school in a tribal region were children or teenagers, according to the country's largest Islamic opposition party.
The government has described the school, in the Bajur region bordering Afghanistan, as a terrorist training camp. But a list drawn up by Jamaat-e-Islami published Sunday in The News daily indicated that 13 of the victims were younger than 12. The youngest was 7.
Almost all the others were teenage boys, and only the school's principal and two other men were over 20, the list showed.
Jamaat-e-Islami revealed the ages of 79 of the 80 victims, but said it could not ascertain the age of one of the students.
"We managed to compile a list comprising the ages and addresses of those who fell prey, to show the world there was no terrorist in the madrassa and there was no military," said Maulana Hanoor Rashid, a lawmaker from Bajur.
Security officials in Islamabad on Sunday dismissed the report, which is likely to further undermine the government's claim that the school was a major training camp for Islamic militants heading to neighboring Afghanistan to fight NATO forces.
"We reject these claims," chief army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press. "We're quite certain these were militants undergoing training and not children being educated."
Pakistan's government has come under increasing pressure from Afghanistan, the United States and NATO to crack down on cross-border infiltration.
A surveillance video of the camp broadcast on national television on Friday showed dozens of people jogging in a circle and doing calisthenics. No weapons were visible, and the government claimed they had been removed from the site after the helicopter gunship attack.
The attack sparked mass protests in the tribal region. On Saturday, 10,000 people demonstrated in the district capital of Khar, about 120 miles northwest of Islamabad.
Elsewhere, suspected Islamic militants on Saturday fatally shot a Pakistani tribal elder from South Waziristan who backed the central government's drive to evict foreign fighters from the area, officials said Sunday.
Also Saturday, militants abducted a government official in North Waziristan as he traveled home for the weekend. Five masked gunmen seized Faizullah Khan from a bus at a roadblock in the town of Bannu.
In recent years, scores of pro-government officials and other people in Pakistan's tribal regions have been executed by militants linked with al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The government has described the school, in the Bajur region bordering Afghanistan, as a terrorist training camp. But a list drawn up by Jamaat-e-Islami published Sunday in The News daily indicated that 13 of the victims were younger than 12. The youngest was 7.
Almost all the others were teenage boys, and only the school's principal and two other men were over 20, the list showed.
Jamaat-e-Islami revealed the ages of 79 of the 80 victims, but said it could not ascertain the age of one of the students.
"We managed to compile a list comprising the ages and addresses of those who fell prey, to show the world there was no terrorist in the madrassa and there was no military," said Maulana Hanoor Rashid, a lawmaker from Bajur.
Security officials in Islamabad on Sunday dismissed the report, which is likely to further undermine the government's claim that the school was a major training camp for Islamic militants heading to neighboring Afghanistan to fight NATO forces.
"We reject these claims," chief army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press. "We're quite certain these were militants undergoing training and not children being educated."
Pakistan's government has come under increasing pressure from Afghanistan, the United States and NATO to crack down on cross-border infiltration.
A surveillance video of the camp broadcast on national television on Friday showed dozens of people jogging in a circle and doing calisthenics. No weapons were visible, and the government claimed they had been removed from the site after the helicopter gunship attack.
The attack sparked mass protests in the tribal region. On Saturday, 10,000 people demonstrated in the district capital of Khar, about 120 miles northwest of Islamabad.
Elsewhere, suspected Islamic militants on Saturday fatally shot a Pakistani tribal elder from South Waziristan who backed the central government's drive to evict foreign fighters from the area, officials said Sunday.
Also Saturday, militants abducted a government official in North Waziristan as he traveled home for the weekend. Five masked gunmen seized Faizullah Khan from a bus at a roadblock in the town of Bannu.
In recent years, scores of pro-government officials and other people in Pakistan's tribal regions have been executed by militants linked with al Qaeda and the Taliban.
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