Pro-Taliban tribesmen condemn air raid

KHAR, Pakistan --Thousands of pro-Taliban tribesmen denounced Pakistan's air raid on a seminary that killed 80 people, accusing the U.S. of involvement in the attack and vowing Tuesday to send waves of suicide bombers to retaliate.

A security official said al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, and the purported London airline bomb mastermind had both visited the religious school in the tribal-dominated northern Bajur district several times, but they weren't there at the time of Monday's raid.

Pakistan's military said the school -- known as a madrassa -- was destroyed by missile-firing helicopters because it was preparing dozens of students to launch attacks in this South Asian nation and neighboring Afghanistan.

The carnage inflicted in the Bajur village of Chingai and conflicting claims over whether the victims were trainee militants or madrassa students set the scene for widespread unrest in Pakistan, a Muslim majority country of more than 150 million people whose military-run government is a close U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.

In Bajur's main town of Khar, near Chingai, 20,000 tribesmen, many brandishing firearms, railed against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and President Bush and called for their deaths.

"God is great!" "Death to Bush! Death to Musharraf!" and "Anyone who is a friend of America is a traitor!" they chanted.

Local pro-Taliban elder Inayatur Rahman told the crowd he had prepared a "squad of suicide bombers" to target Pakistani security forces in the same way militants are attacking in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"We will carry out these suicide attacks soon," he said, asking the crowd if they approved. The angry mob yelled back, "Yes!"

The rally also adopted a verbal resolution to stone to death anyone found spying for the Pakistan army or the U.S. government.

Smaller rallies were held in other Pakistani cities, including Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore, Multan, Quetta and the capital, Islamabad. Protesters from hard-line Islamic groups burned U.S. flags and effigies of Bush, called for toppling Musharraf's government and denounced what they described as the killing of innocent students and teachers.

The protests come at a volatile time for Musharraf, who has been under U.S. and Afghan pressure to crack down on militants operating along the Pakistan-Afghan frontier where al-Qaida and Taliban militants are believed to roam freely.

Musharraf rejects claims his government does too little to crush militants on Pakistan's side of the border and says the military has captured hundreds of al-Qaida suspects and handed them over to U.S. authorities in return for millions of dollars in rewards.

Many observers criticized Pakistan for using extreme force against the madrassa instead of finding a less-violent means to handle the matter.

Ali Dayan Hasan, a South Asia representative for Human Rights Watch, accused Pakistani authorities of "persistent use of excessive and disproportionate force ... in pursuing counterterror operations."

Pakistan's military said its helicopters fired five missiles into the madrassa, flattening the building and killing 80 people inside -- purportedly no women or children. Among the dead was Liaquat Hussain, a fugitive cleric and al-Zawahri associate who ran the religious school.

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

Locals claimed unmanned U.S. Predator drones were flying above the village before the missile strikes. Pakistan and U.S. military officials denied any American involvement, saying the operation was conducted fully by Pakistan.

In January, a U.S. Predator drone fired a missile targeting al-Zawahri in Damadola, near Chingai, missing the al-Qaida No. 2 but killing several al-Qaida members and civilians and sparking massive anti-U.S. protests across Pakistan.

Among the dead from the Damadola attack was believed to have been al-Qaida's operational commander in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province, an Egyptian identified as Abu Ubaida.

But on Tuesday, a Pakistani security official said both al-Zawahri and Abu Ubaida had visited the bombed seminary several times in the past, but were not in the building at the time of Monday's attack.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, also revealed that Abu Ubaida was the previously unidentified al-Qaida leader who had masterminded the alleged London terror plot -- foiled in August -- to blow up trans-Atlantic passenger jets.

"The madrassa that was targeted in Bajur had frequently been visited by al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri (and) the al-Qaida mastermind of the London terror plot, Abu Ubaida al-Masri," said the official.

Monday's raid, he added, was aimed not at high-value targets but at destroying a terrorist training facility allegedly being run out of the seminary that was preparing 75 pupils for attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

One of three survivors, 22-year-old Abu Bakar, said from his hospital bed in Peshawar the seminary was used by students -- including children as young as 5 -- and teachers, not terrorists.

"There was no militant training in the madrassa," said Bakar, whose suffered broken legs. "We had come here to learn God's religion."

Bakar said 86 people were inside the seminary and just he and two other students -- 15 and 16 years old -- survived.

"I am wounded but am more saddened by the deaths of small, innocent children," Bakar said.

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Associated Press writers Sadaqat Jan and Paul Garwood in Islamabad contributed to this report.