Pakistani tribals seethe over airstrike on madrasa

KHAR, Pakistan, Oct 31 (Reuters) More than 15,000 armed Pakistani tribesmen protested today over a Pakistan Army helicopter attack on an al-Qaeda-linked religious school that killed around 80 suspected militants.

Chants of ''Down with America'' and ''Down with Musharraf'' rang out as the tribesmen gathered in Khar, main town in the Bajaur tribal region close to the Afghan border, in anger at the air strike.

''Our jihad (holy war) will continue and Inshallah (God willing), people will go to Afghanistan to oust American and British forces,'' Maulana Faqir Mohammad, a pro-Taliban cleric, told the crowd of turbaned tribals, many carrying Kalashnikovs and wearing bandoliers, and a few shouldering rocket launchers.

While the government claimed the madrasa school at Chenagai was being used to train militants, protesters said the dead, mostly young men aged between 15 and 25, were merely students.

President Pervez Musharraf, speaking at a seminar in Islamabad, said the army had killed militants.

''We were working on them for six or seven days, we know who they were. They were doing military training,'' Musharraf said.

Nowhere is Musharraf's alliance with the United States in a war on terrorism more unpopular than in the Pashtun tribal belt straddling the Pakistan-Afghan border.

A mountainous region that is difficult to access, Bajaur lies across from the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, where US troops are hunting al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

HOTBED OF SUPPORT Along with North and South Waziristan, Bajaur is regarded as a hotbed of support for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

Thousands of fighters took refuge in the semi-autonomous tribal lands after US-backed forces drove them from Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on US cities.

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