Pakistan bombings: Taliban admits Shabqadar attacks

At least 120 people were wounded in the blasts at the training centre for the Frontier Constabulary in Shabqadar, Charsadda district.

After early suspicions that one of the bombs was planted, police said both blasts were suicide attacks.

The Pakistani Taliban said they carried out the attack to avenge the death of Osama Bin Laden earlier this month.

The al-Qaeda leader was killed during a US commando raid in the northern Pakistani town of Abbottabad on 2 May.

Friday's attack came hours before army chiefs appeared before parliament to explain their actions over Bin Laden's death.

At the closed-door briefing, ISI chief Lieut-Gen Ahmed Shujaa Pasha is reported to have told MPs that he had offered his resignation after the Navy Seals raid, but had been turned down by the army chief.

'Deadliest attack'

The bombings happened as newly trained cadets from the Frontier Constabulary were getting into buses after completing their course.

The Frontier Constabulary is used to police the regions bordering Pakistan's tribal areas.

"Both attacks were suicide attacks," said the police chief of Charsadda district, Nisar Khan Marwat.

"The first suicide bomber came on a motorcycle and detonated his vest among the Frontier Constabulary men," AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

"When other [Frontier Constabulary] people came to the rescue to help their colleagues, the second bomber came on another motorcycle and blew himself up."

At least 66 of the dead were recruits, but there were also civilian casualties, officials say. A number of vehicles were destroyed in the blast.

"I was sitting in a van waiting for my colleagues. We were in plain clothes and we were happy we were going to see our families," Ahmad Ali, a wounded paramilitary policeman, told AFP.

"I heard someone shouting 'Allahu Akbar' [God is great] and then I heard a huge blast. I was hit by something in my back shoulder.

"In the meantime, I heard another blast and I jumped out of the van. I felt that I was injured and bleeding."

Lady Reading hospital in Peshawar has been inundated with casualties and doctors said they were fighting to save the lives of 40 critically injured cadets.

"It's the first revenge for the martyrdom of... Bin Laden. There will be more," Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told the Reuters news agency by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Shabqadar lies on the border with Afghanistan, about 35km (22 miles) north-west of Peshawar, not far from the militant stronghold of Mohmand.

The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad says the security forces have often been the target of such attacks as they fight the Pakistani Taliban across the north-west of the country, but Friday's bombing is the deadliest attack this year.

He adds that the Pakistani army - which has come under intense scrutiny and criticism over the Bin Laden affair - is likely to point out that this attack is an illustration of the sacrifices it has made in the "war on terror".

'Living dead'

After Friday's parliamentary briefing, Pakistan's information minister said Lieut-Gen Pasha had told MPs he was ready to take responsibility for any criminal failing.

"If any of our responsibility is determined and any gap identified, that our negligence was criminal negligence, and there was an intentional failure, then we are ready to face any consequences," said the minister, Firdous Ashiq Awan, citing the general.

Mr Awan told Express TV that killing Bin Laden had been a shared US-Pakistani goal but the Americans had breached Pakistan's sovereignty by going after him on their own.

The spy chief also told parliament Bin Laden had been isolated and "living like a dead man", the minister said.

"We had already killed all his allies and so we had killed him even before he was dead," Mr Awan cited Lieut-Gen Pasha as saying.

Our correspondent says many politicians and members of the public appear to be less concerned about Bin Laden's presence in Pakistan and more about the way the US was able to carry out its raid without official permission.

The US gives billions of dollars in military and humanitarian aid to Pakistan, but has questioned its reliability as an ally in combating the militants.

In recent years, Taliban militants have killed hundreds of people in bombings and other attacks across Pakistan.

Thailand police arrest man with rare animals in luggage

The animals - all under two months old - had been drugged and put into cages in the man's suitcases, police said.

The suspect, a 36-year-old man from the United Arab Emirates, was trying to board a flight from Bangkok to Dubai.

Several people are thought to be involved and an investigation into a trafficking network is under way.

The man was seized by undercover police at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport while he was waiting to check-in as a first-class passenger.

Officers had been monitoring him since his black market purchase of the rare animals, said the Freeland Foundation, an anti-trafficking group based in Thailand.

'Virtual zoo'

There were two leopards, two panthers, an Asiatic black bear and two macaque monkeys in the man's luggage.

"It looked like they had sedated the animals and had them in flat cages so they couldn't move around much," said Steven Galster, director of Freeland, who was present at the arrest.

Some of the animals were placed inside canisters with air holes.

"It was a very sophisticated smuggling operation. We've never seen one like this before," Mr Galster said. "The guy had a virtual zoo in his suitcases."

Last month, Thai customs officials seized 1,800 protected lizards said to be destined to be sold as food.

The Bengal monitor lizards, stuffed into blue mesh bags and hidden behind fruit, were found in southern Thailand near the Malaysian border.

Lizard meat is valuable and seen as a delicacy in parts of Asia.

US presses Pakistan on Bin Laden

Mr Obama told CBS show 60 Minutes the government in Islamabad had to find out if any of its officials knew of the al-Qaeda leader's whereabouts.

An Obama administration official said the US wanted to speak to Bin Laden's widows, who are in Pakistani custody.

Pakistan has denied knowing Bin Laden was holed up in Abbottabad.

In an interview being broadcast on Sunday, President Obama told CBS the al-Qaeda leader must have had "some sort of support network" in Pakistan, but he did not know whether it included government officials.

"We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of [Pakistan's] government, people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate and, more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate," the US president said in the interview, which was conducted on Wednesday.

'Library' of intelligence

US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon meanwhile told NBC talk show Meet the Press that Islamabad needed to establish how Bin Laden lived for six years a short drive from the capital and beside a military academy.

With Bin Laden dead, there has been speculation about whether his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, will take over as al-Qaeda leader.

But Mr Donilon said the Egyptian "is not anywhere near the leader that Osama Bin Laden was".

He also said the Pakistani authorities needed to provide the US with access to Bin Laden's three widows, who were taken into custody after last week's US commando raid.

American officials have meanwhile been poring over computer files seized by US special forces from the hideout.

"It's [the intelligence cache] about the size, the CIA tells us, of a small college library," said Mr Donilon.

On Saturday, the Pentagon released from the material five home videos featuring Bin Laden, with the audio removed.

They included a message by the al-Qaeda leader to the US and footage of Bin Laden watching an item about himself on TV.

'Ridiculous'

US officials said the Abbottabad compound was a command and control centre from where Bin Laden had actively led al-Qaeda.

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