Pakistan gunships pound Taliban, Al-Qaeda amid US pressure

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FE Team | Published: August 11, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

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MIRANSHAH, Aug 10 (AFP): Helicopter gunships pounded militant hideouts in northern Pakistan as the military scoured mountains Friday for 16 missing soldiers believed kidnapped by Taliban rebels.
As the US called for greater efforts against militants using Pakistan's remote Hindu Kush mountains as a base, the military said at least 10 Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters were killed in the air attack Thursday.
The operation also involved ground forces in the restive North Waziristan region near the Afghan border, where military strikes on militants, suspected of launching attacks, have taken place all week.
"The miscreants killed in Thursday's strike were local militants allied to Taliban and Al-Qaeda," a security official told the news agency.
Military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said security forces were focused on squeezing out the militants, who include local and foreign fighters.
"There is no planned operation going on in North Waziristan but we are responding with greater force against militant attacks on security forces now," Arshad said.
"In previous months there were several attempts made by miscreants against security forces and we would show patience but it is not the case now."
Arshad said the military was hunting for 16 paramilitary soldiers who went missing Thursday morning in South Waziristan.
The kidnapping was the first by local Taliban since the South Waziristan authorities struck a peace accord in 2005 with the militant leader in the region, Baitullah Mehsud, said Khaista Rehman, senior political officer in the region.
He said the soldiers were wearing plain clothes and travelling in unmarked vehicles on their way to Sararogha Fort from Jandola FC (frontier constabulary) Camp when they were abducted by unknown gunmen in the Spinkai Raghzai area.
Tensions have been running high in the area since last month when another Taliban leader, Abdullah Mehsud, reportedly blew himself up in the Zhob area of Baluchistan during a military operation, Rehman said.
Militants have said the deployment of troops in South Waziristan is a breach of the peace accord and had threatened revenge for Mehsud's death, he said, adding the militants had not yet claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.
Local authorities were negotiating for the safe release of the soldiers, he said.
The fiercely independent tribes of the Waziristan region have been accused of sheltering Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants blamed for plotting bombings and other attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan and around the world.
The new Pakistani raid came as tribal leaders from Afghanistan and Pakistan meet in Kabul to discuss Islamic militant violence in the region.
However, elders from North and South Waziristan, two of Pakistan's seven tribal regions along the Afghan border, are boycotting the "peace jirga".
The strike also came as US President George W. Bush again urged Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to do more to track down Al-Qaeda leaders.