Telegraph.co.uk- - Pakistani forces launched a dawn strike with missile-firing helicopters against a religious school yesterday that killed at least 80 suspected militants.

It sparked protests by Islamist groups as Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall started the first full day of their visit to Pakistan
A Pakistan army spokesman said that the madrassa, or religious school, near the town of Khar in the Bajaur tribal agency in the North West Frontier Province was being used as a "militant training camp".

"We received confirmed intelligence reports that 70-80 militants were hiding in a madrassa used as a terrorist training facility, which was destroyed by an army strike, led by helicopters," said Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan, the chief army spokesman.

He added: "These militants were involved in actions inside Pakistan and probably in Afghanistan."

Gen Sultan said that those in charge of the madrassa had refused warnings by the military in recent weeks to close it down. The leader of the madrassa, a radical cleric called Maulana Liaqat Ullah Hussain, was among the dead.

Residents said that they had seen three or four army helicopters flying over the village of Chenagai at around 5am.

The blast levelled the compound, tearing mattresses and scattering Islamic books, including copies of the Koran, according to a local reporter.
Witnesses claimed that the dead were not militants but included young students and teachers. Several hours after the attack, the bodies of 20 dead tribesmen were lined in a field near the madrassa before a burial attended by thousands of angry locals.

Among those said to have been killed was Liaquat Hussain, a Pakistani cleric and associate of Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. He is reported to have sheltered al-Qa'eda operatives in the past.

Another associate of Zawahiri and fugitive al-Qe'eda leader, Faqir Mohammed, was believed to have been in the madrassa and left 30 minutes before the strike, a Pakistani intelligence official claimed.

Following the attack, Mohammed addressed a crowd of 10,000 mourners at a mass funeral.
"We were peaceful, but the government attacked and killed our innocent people on orders from America," he said. "It is an open aggression."

The death total is the highest for a single military operation targeting suspected Islamic militants in Pakistan who cross the border into Afghanistan to join the Taliban insurgency against Nato-led and Afghan forces.

It provoked an angry backlash from Islamic groups.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Khar, Bajaur's main town, where they shouted anti-Western slogans.

There were also protests in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi. Islamic parties called for further protests in the province today.

A cabinet minister from the North West Frontier Province, Siraj ul-Haq, resigned in protest over the attack.

"This is a very wrong action," he said.

"They [the victims] were not given any warning. This was an unprovoked attack on a madrassa. They were innocent people," he said.
The attacks came hours before Prince Charles thanked Pakistan's president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, for his country's help in fighting terrorism and for supporting British troops fighting in Afghanistan.

However, in the past Western diplomats have strongly criticised Pakistan � which is heavily subsidised by the United States for its role in the war on terror - for launching headline-grabbing attacks on suspected militants to coincide with visits by high-profile Western leaders.

In March the army claimed to have destroyed a terrorist training camp in North Waziristan and killed 45 suspected pro-Taliban militiamen on the eve of a visit to Pakistan by President George W Bush.

Yesterday's attack came two days after local militants attended a rally in the area where they declared that Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qa'eda leader, and Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban chief, were their heroes.

In the past, American intelligence officers have suggested that Bajaur was a possible hiding place for bin Laden, who along with Mullah Omar is still at large almost five years after Afghanistan was invaded by American-led forces.