A pair of suicide bombers attacked recruits leaving a paramilitary training center in Pakistan on Friday, killing 80 people in a strike that the Pakistani Taliban claimed it carried out to avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The blasts in the northwest were a reminder of the savagery of al-Qaida-linked militants in Pakistan.
They occurred even as the country faces international suspicion that elements within its security forces may have been harboring bin Laden, who was killed in a raid in Abbottabad, about a three hours' drive from the scene of the bombing.
"We have done this to avenge the Abbottabad incident," Ahsanullah Ahsan, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, told The Associated Press in a phone call.
The Pakistani Taliban, close allies of al-Qaida, are fighting to bring down the nuclear-armed state and impose their vision of Islamist rule.
They launched their war in earnest in 2007, after security forces cleared militant gunmen from a radical mosque in the capital, killing about 100 people.
