Deadly blasts in Pakistan could rattle relations with US

May 14, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Los Angeles Times

PESHAWAR, Pakistan

Twin suicide bomb blasts that killed at least 80 paramilitary force recruits in northwest Pakistan on Friday — an attack that Taliban militants said was meant to avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. commandos — could trigger new doubts among Pakistanis about the value of Islamabad’s already rocky relationship with Washington.

The bombers targeted scores of Frontier Constabulary paramilitary recruits who had just completed six months of training and were boarding vans outside the center’s main gate before going on a 10-day leave, police and survivors said. The base is located in Shabqadar, a town near the edge of Mohmand, a tribal area where Pakistani troops have struggled for years to rein in Pakistani Taliban militants.

The attack was Pakistan’s deadliest this year, and the first major terror strike in the country since bin Laden’s killing.

Pakistanis have grown increasingly worried that they will bear the brunt of retaliatory attacks by militants angered by the May 2 killing of the al-Qaida leader by U.S. Navy SEALs at the compound in the military city of Abbottabad, which he used as sanctuary for five years.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, explaining it was the first of a wave of planned strikes meant to avenge bin Laden’s killing.