Blast at Pakistan Al-Qaeda camp kills 30 militants

2 hours, 30 minutes ago

Around 30 suspected Al-Qaeda militants, including several foreigners, were killed Tuesday in a blast at a training camp in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, officials said.

There were conflicting accounts about the cause of the explosion in North Waziristan district. Residents said three US missiles came from across the frontier while officials said the insurgents were killed by their own bombs.

"Around 30 people were killed in the blast. Ten to 15 are foreign nationals.

They had assembled there and were in the compound, using it as a training compound," chief military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad told AFP.

"There are some Arabs and Turkmen among the foreigners who died in the blast. We don't know what caused it but local reports say it was a training camp used by the militants to prepare explosives."

There was "no report that any high-value target was in there," he said.

Arshad said neither Pakistani nor US-led coalition forces across the border were involved in the incident at Datta Khel, some 45 kilometres (28 miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.

Intelligence officials said on condition of anonymity that the dead men were militants from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda movement, blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Hundreds of foreign Al-Qaeda militants fled into Pakistan's tribal belt after US-led forces ousted the Taliban regime from Afghanistan for hosting Bin Laden and his allies.

Missile attacks have claimed the lives of several suspected militants in Pakistan's volatile tribal belt but Islamabad rarely admits when they are by US forces, due to issues of territorial sovereignty.

Bin Laden himself is widely believed to be hiding somewhere along the rugged Afghan-Pakistani frontier.

Local intelligence officials said the explosion happened at a bomb factory in a madrassa, or Islamic school.

Residents said three missiles came from Afghanistan's Paktika province and struck the mud-brick building.

They said that most of the victims were local tribesmen.

The US-led coalition in Afghanistan said it was not involved.

"We checked into this and we have no indications that we have fired anything across the border into Pakistan," coalition spokesman Colonel David Accetta said in Kabul.

Al-Qaeda's Egyptian deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was said to have escaped an attack by a US missile fired from a Central Intelligence Agency Predator drone in the region in January 2006.

At least four other militants were killed along with more than a dozen civilians.

In December 2005 Egyptian Al-Qaeda explosives specialist Hamza Rabia was killed in a blast in North Waziristan. Residents again said it was a missile strike but the military insisted he was killed by one of his own bombs.

Pakistani authorities signed a controversial peace deal with pro-Taliban militants in North Waziristan in September 2006, following months of clashes which left hundreds of people dead.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070619/wl_afp/pakistanafghanistan_070619194100;_ylt=Ag.VEug5ipa7hFcyFOckUYAwuecA

Bet they didn't see THAT COMING!



HH

Quoted: Now pay attention, because I am only going to show this to you once.

 

Hold my turban and watch this..

I take it someone failed their group bomb-building class project.

two days ago:

http://www.nysun.com/article/56858

Al Qaeda Plans Attacks in West, ABC Reports

WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda camps in Pakistan are "graduating" suicide bomber recruits to reap mayhem on the West.

The ceremony for future terrorists was captured on videotape June 9 by a Pakistani journalist whose recording made its way to ABC News for an exclusive story aired last night.

The tape featured a Qaeda commander, Mansoor Dadullah, congratulating individuals whom he calls Americans, Britons, and Germans in completing their terrorism training. One such individual speaking in English vows to attack Britain.

One American intelligence official asked for comment last night said the tape showed one of a number of training camps. "Northern Pakistan is now for all intents and purposes controlled by Al Qaeda and Qaeda sympathizers."

One of the centers of Qaeda activity are the North and South Waziristan provinces, areas where the Pakistani army last year stopped fighting the Islamist insurgency and allowed for a form self-governance. Other provinces along Afghanistan's border are now in the process of being relinquished.

A recently retired CIA officer who was posted in Pakistan until last year gave particularly low marks to President Musharraf's government. "Their approach was to pretend that nothing was wrong because any other approach would reveal that they were unwilling and unable to do anything about Talibanization," Arthur Keller told the Guardian Newspaper in an interview published Saturday. Mr. Keller accused former Pakistani spy chief, Hamid Gul, in the interview of supporting Taliban-like groups in Pakistan.

The intelligence officer who spoke to the New York Sun said a number of former senior Iraqi Baathists who joined the insurgency against America in Iraq have been "cycled through" new training camps established in the last two years in Pakistan.

After the September 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush struck a new bargain with Pakistan — choosing to overlook the government's past support for the Taliban if Islamabad began working against its former Islamist proxies.

I bet that guy that does the Allstate commecials had something to do with this...

B

AWESOME!!

ROFLMAO