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300+ killed in Pakistan battles
24/08/2007 20:22 - (SA)
Islamabad - About 250 Islamic militants and 60 troops have been killed in just over a month of fighting in Pakistan's tribal belt, the army said on Friday, following intense US pressure to pacify the area.
Two new suicide bombings rocked the rugged region on the border with Afghanistan on Friday, claiming the lives of another six Pakistani soldiers and six rebels, officials said.
The Pashtun-dominated tribal zone has been wracked by violence since a controversial peace pact between the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban rebels in the region broke down in mid-July.
Embattled President Pervez Musharraf has also been warding off threats from Washington, his main backer, to go it alone and launch military strikes on al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents said to have regrouped in the area.
"Some 250 militants have been killed in operations in the tribal districts in the past four to six weeks. Sixty soldiers have also been martyred," said chief military spokesperson Major General Waheed Arshad.
Arshad said the militants who were killed included some foreigners - usually official Pakistani jargon for militants linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
He said most of the deaths among the security forces occurred in suicide attacks and roadside bomb explosions targeting their convoys.
In the latest attack on Friday a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden truck into a military convoy near the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan, killing five soldiers and injuring five others, Arshad said.
Gunship helicopters pounded nearby militant hideouts after the attack and killed a number of rebels, Arshad said. Local officials said six militants died in the bombing and the operation was continuing in the area.
Kidnapping and beheading
In another suicide attack hours later, the attacker blew himself up near a military convoy in the town of Asadkhel, 20km south of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan district.
One soldier was killed and around 20 more injured, the military said.
Separately armed men kidnapped a paramilitary soldier as he returned from Friday prayers in Miranshah and took him to an unknown location, a local official said.
Authorities are still trying to free 15 paramilitary soldiers taken hostage by militants earlier this month in the neighbouring South Waziristan tribal district. One of the troops was beheaded earlier.
The whole country has suffered a wave of Islamist violence since the bloody siege at the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad during July, in which more than 100 people were killed.
- AFP
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