Pakistan's leaders were preparing to sign a peace accord with Northwest Province leaders on the same day of the school bombing, similar to one signed earlier with Waziristan leaders. In early November, 2006, Afghan President Karzai had proposed that a cross-border council,or jirga be convened to address the issue, claiming that ethnic Pashtuns on both sides of the border are being victimized by Taliban terrorism.
At dawn on October 30, 2006, local residents of the NWFP awoke to helicopter gun ships bombing a local madrasa, or Islamic school. The building was destroyed, and about 80 people were killed in the attack. The Pakistani military claimed the school was being used as a military training camp, and that it sought to flush out terrorists; in some reports, the Pakistani military described the school as one frequently visited by Ayman Al Zawahiri and other Al Qaeda leaders. In yet other reports, the targets were described as members of a local pro-Taliban organization called Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-i-Mohammadi (TNSM), whose leader owned the school and was killed in the attack. According to Pakistani army spokesmen, only male adults were killed in the attack.
Local residents saw the attack differently, and believed it was sponsored by either NATO or the United States. Both claims were denied vigorously by the Pakistani government. Villagers also claimed that the bombed building was functioning as a school, and that up to thirty children were killed. Left to pick up the remains of their dead, many perceived the school bombing as an attack against Islam.
According to one reporter on the scene:
Thousands of tribes people traveled from nearby villages to inspect Chingai's destroyed madrassa, many wailing and others chanting "Long live Islam".
The blast leveled the building, tearing mattresses and scattering Islamic books, including copies of the Quran.
Dozens of villagers collected the remains of at least 30 bodies from the building's rubble, placing the parts of each body into separate, large plastic bags that are normally used to hold fertiliser, before taking them away for burial.
Some analyses following the bombing suggested that the Pakistani army may have attacked the school as a way of purposely forestalling the peace deal. An earlier deal with North Waziristan Islamists was meant to quell the pro-Taliban region. In the wake of reports that the Taliban were taking over control of the region instead, NATO forces became deeply critical, expressing the belief that the Pakistan peace deal made their own war against the Taliban in Afghanistan more difficult to wage. On the verge of making a similar deal, Musharraf may have thus chosen to bomb the school instead, as a way to appease the United States, as well as to seek another way to address the Taliban presence in Pakistan.
This analysis presumes that the attack was in fact carried out by Pakistan, which is the story that both the United States and Pakistan maintained. A significant number of villagers believe that American Predator drones dropped the bombs, and some reported that drones and helicopter gunships appeared overhead for several days before the attack. The probability is that the Pakistani army carried out the attack using American supplied intelligence, and under American pressure. But the local belief that it could have been an American attack is an important part of the story; while it may not speak to concrete fact, it does speak to sincere perceptions and local versions of truth.