Pakistan airstrikes, gun battle kill 55

PESHAWAR, Dec 27 (AFP): At least 55 militants were killed in airstrikes and a gun battle with ground forces in Pakistan's troubled northwest where the military launched a major offensive this year, officials said Saturday.
The army intensified its offensive after the massacre of 150 people in a school in Peshawar this month, a carnage which Pakistan described as its own "mini 9/11" and a game-changer in the fight against extremism.
Troops raided a militant hideout late Friday in an area adjoining Orakzai and Khyber tribal districts-near the Afghan border-where the insurgents had gathered for a meeting, the military said in a statement.
"An intense battle took place, in which 16 terrorists were killed and 20 injured," it said, adding that "fleeing terrorists left behind nine dead bodies of their accomplices".
Troops arrested two critically wounded militants while four soldiers were also wounded in the battle, the statement said.
Separately, 39 militants, including two rebel commanders, were killed in airstrikes in the northwest late Friday and an ammunition depot was also destroyed, according to military spokesman Major General Asim Bajwa.
It was not possible to independently verify the casualties as media are banned from visiting the far-flung area.
In another incident, police said they arrested an important Taliban commander who was wanted for attacks on police and was also involved in the killing a local journalist in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The army has been waging a major offensive against longstanding Taliban and other militant strongholds in the restive tribal areas on the Afghan border for the last six months.
The offensive gathered momentum after the December 16 attack on an army-run school in Peshawar which killed 150 people, 134 of them children.
The Pakistani military says it has killed more than 1,700 militants so far in its heavy offensive in the tribal zone, with 126 soldiers having lost their lives.
Meanwhile: A Pakistani court has issued an arrest warrant for a hardline Islamic cleric who suggested the massacre of school children in country's worst ever terror attack was understandable, after he allegedly threatened people criticising him.
Maulana Abdul Aziz, the pro-Taliban cleric and head of the Red Mosque in capital Islamabad has been accused of threatening civil society activists, who this week staged several demonstrations outside the mosque, a police official and a spokesman for the mosque told AFP.
The protests were staged to denounce Aziz, who refused to condemn the massacre on a television talk-show.
Later Aziz effectively told worshippers the attack in Peshawar, which left around 150 people dead-mainly children, was a justifiable reaction to the army's "un-Islamic" operation against militants in the North Waziristan tribal district.
"O rulers, O people in power, if you will commit such acts, there will be a reaction," he told worshippers in a sermon last week, prompting further protests accusing him of being a Taliban sympathiser.
"Police have received the court order and we are trying our best to implement it," a police official in capital Islamabad told AFP, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to media.
Hafiz Ihtesham Ahmed, a spokesman for the Red Mosque accused civil society activists of pressurising police to register a case against Aziz.
"This case has no grounds, so we will resist any move to arrest Maulana Abdul Aziz," Ahmed told AFP.
Pakistan has described the bloody rampage in Peshawar as its own "mini 9/11", calling it a game-changer in the fight against extremism.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed the assault as revenge for an ongoing military offensive against its strongholds in the tribal northwest.
The Red Mosque, which stands a stone's throw from the parliament buildings in the centre of the capital, was the scene of a week-long military siege against radicals which left more than 100 people dead in 2007.
Earlier this month female students affiliated with the Red Mosque issued a video statement praising the Islamic State group and calling on it to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden.
The women belong to the Jamia Hafsa seminary which in April named its library in honour of the slain Al-Qaeda leader.