Forty-two men, including 15 foreigners from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, were killed in an explosion in a madrasa (religious school) in north Pakistan, near the Afghani border, the London-based daily Al-Hayyat reported.
Local eyewitnesses said they saw an aircraft coming from across the border with Afghanistan, which launched three missiles at the madrasa, the witnesses said.
Pakistan’s Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Wahid Arshad said the explosion occurred when bombs being made by militants in the madrasa were accidentally detonated. Arshad added the madrasa was used a training facility for terrorists affiliated with Al-Qa’ida.
A spokesman for the NATO forces in Afghanistan denied NATO had any involvement in the incident, adding that it respected Pakistan’s sovereignty.
Following the incident the Pakistani opposition members of parliament left a parliamentary session in protest.
Hundreds of Afghani followers of Al-Qa’ida and the Taliban fled into Pakistan’s tribal belt on the border with Afghanistan following the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.
Local tribal leaders in the border Pakistani province of North Waziristan denied that the madrasa was used to train terrorists.