Click photo to enlarge
Pakistani student Liaba, front, an injured victim of an
explosion, admits at a local hospital in Peshawar,
Pakistan. Three US soldiers travelling with Pakistan
security force members were killed in a roadside bombing
near a girl's school. Other casualties included school
children.(AP Photo/ Mohammad Sajjad)
A roadside bofmb has killed three US soldiers and partly
destroyed a girls' school in northwest Pakistan in an
attack that drew attention to a little-publicised American
military training mifssion in the al-Qaida and Taliban
heartland.
They were the first known US military fatalities in
Pakistan's lawless tribal regions near the Afghan border and
a major victory for militants who have been hit hard by a
surge of US missile strikes and a major Pakistani army
offensive.
The blast also killed three schoolgirls and a Pakistani
soldier who was traveling with the Americans. Two more US
soldiers were wounded, along with more than 100 other people,
mostly students at the school, officials said.
The attack took place in Lower Dir, which like much of the
northwest is home to pockets of militants. The Pakistani army
launched a major operation in Lower Dir and the nearby Swat
Valley last year that succeeded in pushing the insurgents
out, but isolated attacks have continued.
The Americans were travelling with Pakistani security
officers in a five-car convoy that was hit by a bomb close to
the Koto Girls High School.
"It was a very huge explosion that shattered my windows,
filled my house with smoke and dust and also some human flesh
fell in my yard," said Akber Khan, who lives some 45m
from the blast site.
The explosion flattened much of the school, leaving books,
bags and pens strewn in the rubble.
"It was a horrible situation," said Mohammad Siddiq, a
40-year-old guard at the school. "Many girls were wounded,
crying for help and were trapped in the debris."
Siddiq said the death toll would have been much worse if the
blast had occurred only minutes later because most of the
girls were still playing in the yard and had not yet returned
to classrooms, some of which collapsed.
"What was the fault of these innocent students?" said
Mohammed Dawood, a resident who helped police dig the injured
from the debris.
The soldiers were part of a small contingent of American
soldiers training members of the paramilitary Frontier Corps,
Pakistan's army and the US Embassy said. The mission is
trying to strengthen the ill-equipped and poorly trained
outfit's ability to fight militants.
The soldiers were driving to attend the inauguration of a
different girl's school, which had been renovated with US
humanitarian assistance, the embassy said in a statement. The
school that was ravaged by the blast was not the one where
the convoy was heading, security officials said.
US special envoy to Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said it did
not appear that the attack directly targetted the Americans.
But the blast, which police said was detonated by remote
control, hit the vehicle in which the Americans were
traveling along with members of the Frontier Corps, according
to Amjad Ali Shah, a local journalist traveling with the
convoy to cover the school opening.
Holbrooke also said the US has not tried to hide its training
mission with the Pakistani military.
