Suicide attack kills 27 Pakistan army recruits

A boy in a school uniform blew himself up at a Pakistani army recruitment centre in the troubled northwest region on Thursday, killing 27 cadets, in an attack claimed by the Taliban to avenge US drone strikes and local military offensives.

The teenager walked up to the parade inside a heavily guarded military compound in the town of Mardan, where there is also a school, and blew himself up killing the soldiers with shrapnel and explosives, officials said.

The attack challenged official assertions that army offensives had weakened al-Qaeda-linked Taliban militants waging a campaign to destabilize Pakistan's U.S.-backed government.

The brazen bombing suggested militants are regrouping after a lull in major attacks. Militant operations in recent months have been mostly sectarian and have not focused on military targets.

Thursday's was the deadliest suicide bombing in Pakistan since a woman with a bomb strapped under her burqa killed 43 people at a U.N. food distribution point on Christmas Day 2010 in the tribal district of Bajaur.

The Taliban claimed responsibility and threatened "bigger attacks" in coming days to avenge American drone strikes and Pakistani military operations targeting Islamist militants in the northwestern tribal belt.

"It was a suicide attack. The teenager bomber was on foot and was wearing a school uniform," Abdullah Khan, a senior police officer in Mardan, around 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the regional capital Peshawar, told AFP.

A military official in Peshawar said the casualties were all army recruits who were attacked at the Punjab Regiment Center.

Pakistan suffers near-daily attacks blamed on Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants that have killed more than 4,000 people since government troops evicted Islamists from an Islamabad mosque in a deadly July 2007 siege.

Tribal belt

Most of the attacks are concentrated in the northwest, where Washington has branded the lawless tribal belt snaking the border with Afghanistan as the global headquarters of al-Qaeda and the most dangerous place on Earth.

Pakistan is under pressure from U.S. officials to eliminate militant sanctuaries in the tribal belt, in order to help U.S. efforts to win the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and defeat al-Qaeda.

But attacks on Pakistani police and soldiers have spiked since the start of a fresh offensive in the tribal district of Mohmand, where the United Nations has said around 25,000 people have fled the fighting.

Mardan is around 50 kilometers east of Mohmand.

"We proudly claim this suicide attack," Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.

"We will continue such attacks on those people who are providing security to the Americans. These attacks are to avenge the drone attacks and military operations in the tribal areas. Until and unless they stop, we will continue."

Pakistan's northwest and tribal areas have been wracked by violence since hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters sought refuge there after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The military has claimed victory in a number of battles against militants, most notably in 2009 in the Taliban's former headquarters of South Waziristan, but attacks have continued across the country.

Relations between Pakistan and the United States have deteriorated since a US official shot dead two men in the eastern city of Lahore last month, and was taken into Pakistani custody under investigation for double murder.

Raymond Davis said he acted in self-defense, fearing the men were about to rob him. Washington says he has diplomatic immunity and should be released immediately.

Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik has confirmed the American had a diplomatic passport, but the government says the matter stands with the courts, where lawyers argue that diplomatic immunity be waived in case of grave crimes.