Pakistan's madrasas groom terrorists: Bhutto

LARKANA (Pakistan): Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto said on Sunday some religious schools were turning children into killers.   

Speaking to about 25,000 supporters near her ancestral home in the southern town of Larkana, she also renewed accusations the government had done nothing to stop militant violence.   

"They always try to stop democratic forces but don't make any effort to check extremists, terrorists and fanatics," she told a rally at a cricket stadium, two days after a suicide bomber killed nearly 50 worshippers in a mosque.   

Bhutto said President Pervez Musharraf had spoken of the need to reform religious schools, or madrasas, but had done nothing. She said she respected genuine religious schools.   

"Then there are the political madrasas, the political madrasas that teach their pupils how to make bombs, how to use rifles and how to kill women, children and the elderly."

"Who they are who tell children to carry out bombing on Eid al-Adha," she said, referring to the attack on Friday in the northwestern town of Charsadda.   

Police said they suspected Islamist militants based in semi-autonomous tribal lands on the Afghan border were behind the attack, the latest in a wave of suicide blasts in Pakistan.   

At Bhutto's rally, private security guards used metal detectors to check people entering the stadium.   

Bhutto survived a suicide attack in October when a bomber killed nearly 150 people at a procession in Karachi to welcome her home from eight years of self-imposed exile.   

"Extremism is getting strong in our tribal areas and lawlessness is spreading throughout the country," Bhutto said.