'Schoolboy' Bomber Kills 31 at Pakistani Army Base

Pakistani security personnel look at the fire flaring up from the main gas pipeline after a bomb explosion by suspected militants at Dera Murad Jamali in Nasirabad district early February 10, 2011. Militants blew up a key gas pipeline in the insurgency-hit southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan on February 10 suspending supplies to tens of thousand of consumers, officials said.

A suicide bomber has attacked an army facility in Pakistan's troubled north-west, killing at least 31 people and injuring 40 others, officials say. Police described the bomber, who struck in the city of Mardan, as a male teenager dressed in school uniform. He attacked as recruits conducted morning exercises.
Correspondents say there has been a relative lull in the number of attacks on the army in the region, where Taliban militants are active.

A Taliban spokesman said the militants had carried out the bombing. The Mardan bombing points to the continuing ability of militants in the north-west to strike at high security locations. The use of a bomber in his late teens is not unusual, but the fact that he wore the uniform of a college located inside the military area helped him slip past at least six security checkpoints before hitting his target.  The Taliban have been trying to launch an attack within the Mardan cantonment, or military area, since 2008. In May that year, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a bakery in the cantonment after he failed to get through a police checkpoint.

In July 2010, a group of militants scaled the rear walls of the cantonment to launch a gun and bomb attack, but were beaten back by the police and troops.  The latest attack comes after a long lull, and days after the army launched an operation in the nearby Mohmand tribal region. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani condemned the attack on the Punjab Regiment Centre.  "Such cowardly attacks cannot affect the morale of the security agencies and the resolve of the nation to eradicate terrorism," he said in a statement.

Mardan police official Abdullah Khan told the BBC that the teenage bomber had been wearing the uniform of a school located in the area, Aziz Bhatti College.  The bomber struck as recruits were doing physical training on the parade ground, he said.  A bomb attack on the same centre in 2006 killed at least 20 soldiers.
The Punjab Regiment is one of Pakistan's most famous military units. There has been an increasing use of teenage bombers across Pakistan.

Pakistani troops have found whole camps in the north-west where children as young as 10 or 12 were being trained to become suicide attackers, our correspondent says. Speaking to AFP news agency from an undisclosed location, Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq said the organisation carried out Thursday's attack, and was proud to avenge people killed by US drone attacks and by military operations in the tribal areas.
The Taliban, he said, would continue to carry out attacks on "those who protect the Americans".