Official : Pakistan airstrikes kill 17 more militants in northwest
Written by Writer on Saturday, November 8th, 2008
Official : Pakistan airstrikes kill 17 more militants in northwest
KHAR, Pakistan — Pakistani helicopters and jets killed 17 suspected militants, an official said Friday as violence raged in Taliban strongholds near the Afghan border.
Ten other insurgents were wounded in the airstrikes on rebel hide-outs in the Bajur region late Thursday, said Jamil Khan, the No. 2 government representative in the semiautonomous area.
Pakistan has received U.S. praise for offensives against militants suspected of involvement in violence in neighboring Afghanistan. The army claims to have killed 1,500 insurgents in Bajur in the past three months.
Khan gave no indication of any government casualties in the latest clashes. Insecurity and government restrictions make it impossible to verify accounts of the fighting.
However, insurgents are putting up stiff resistance and hitting back with suicide attacks, further dismaying a population simmering with anti-U.S. sentiment and raising doubts about nuclear-armed Pakistan’s political and economic stability.
Two suicide attacks targeting pro-government tribesmen and security forces killed at least 19 people and wounded dozens in the northwest on Thursday.
One of them struck in Bajur, killing 17 pro-government Salarzai tribesmen who had formed a militia to combat insurgents. Forty other people were hurt, officials said.
In the nearby Swat Valley, a suicide car bomber rammed his vehicle into a checkpoint manned by security forces near a police compound, killing at least two paramilitary troops and wounding at least 20 other people, officials said.
The Salarzai tribesmen were preparing to stage an assault on local militant hide-outs when Thursday’s blast occurred, said Iqbal Khattak, a government official.
A man who said he was a spokesman for a Taliban-linked group, Caravan-e-Naimatullah, claimed it was behind the bombing. Little is known about the group, but earlier this year it briefly took over a handful of schools in the region.
Pakistan launched an offensive in Bajur three months ago to dismantle what it said was a virtual Taliban mini-state from where militants were flowing into Afghanistan to launch attacks on U.S. and other coalition forces there.
Meanwhile, authorities exchanged three captured militants - including a deputy to Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud - for 10 military personnel held by the insurgents.
Haji Afzal Khan, the mayor in northwestern Hangu district, said that the prisoners were swapped Wednesday and that Mehsud’s freed deputy Rafiuddin had assured authorities he would help in peace efforts there.
Rafiuddin was captured in July, while the soldiers were seized later the same month. The government has made similar prisoner exchanges in the region in the past.
Friday, November 7, 2008 3:22 pm TWN, By HABIB KHAN, AP
