'Schoolboy' Bomber Kills Army Recruits in Pakistan

A teenage suicide bomber wearing a school uniform killed at least 31 cadets and wounded 40 more at an army training camp in northwest Pakistan today, officials said.

The bomber's uniform came from a nearby school, police official Abdullah Khan told the BBC. The disguise allowed the terrorist to bypass security checks at the heavily guarded Punjab Regiment Center in Mardan. He detonated his explosives at 8 a.m., as recruits were doing physical training on the parade ground.

A suicide bombing at the same training ground killed 35 people in 2006. Pakistan's GEO TV said it was the deadliest suicide attack in the country since Dec. 25, when a woman with a bomb strapped under her burqa killed 43 people at a U.N. food distribution point in the tribal district of Bajaur.

Khan told The Associated Press that an examination of body parts at the scene revealed that the bomber was a teenage boy -- an increasingly common phenomenon in Pakistan. In 2009, the Pakistani military released footage taken inside a Taliban training camp showing children as young as 11 being taught to become suicide bombers. Once trained, the young, brainwashed bombers are sold to other Taliban leaders for as much as $12,000.

The Pakistan military runs a de-radicalization school for such youths in the northwest of the country, not far from Mardan.

However, Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan told the AP the bomber wasn't a child but a soldier who contacted them and said "he wanted to sacrifice his life for Islam. We accepted his offer and told him to target his fellow soldiers in Mardan."

The AP notes that ex-members of the military have occasionally been linked to attacks in Pakistan, but that a suicide bombing by an active-duty soldier is almost unheard-of.

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This morning's bombing again underlines militants' ability to carry out high-profile, high-casualty attacks despite counteroffensives by Pakistani forces. Those operations -- as well as U.S. drone strikes -- have helped slow down the rate of attacks, but have failed to take out top members of the Pakistani Taliban, according to The Washington Post.

And it's ordinary Pakistanis who bear the brunt of the insurgents' aggression. This morning, the bodies of two tribal police officials and a villager were discovered in the militant stronghold of North Waziristan. The men had been tortured and then shot repeatedly, according to Pakistan's Dawn News. A note attached to the bodies accused the men of being American spies.