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Troops build-up sparks alarm
A build-up of Western coalition forces on the Afghan border spread alarm yesterday among villagers in the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, a known stronghold of Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.The deployment will add to a mounting sense of foreboding in Pakistan that US ground troops could be ordered into Pakistan on covert missions or hot pursuit to eliminate militants fuelling an insurgency in Afghanistan that appears stronger than ever. Villagers said hundreds of coalition troops had been airlifted to a border area opposite the village of Lowara Mandi. "The movement of troops started last night," an intelligence official said, adding that armoured vehicles and heavy weaponry had been brought in with them. The deployment is in the vicinity of Camp Tillman, a forward operating base for US forces that has come under regular rocket and mortar attack in the past. The Pakistani military spokesman said it was probably a routine movement and the media had created "unnecessary hype". A military spokesman at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul said the US-led coalition did not comment on troop movements. A Taliban spokesman in Bajaur welcomed the build up on the border as a chance to kill more Americans. "It's a gift that they're coming here on our land and making it easy for us to kill our enemies, the enemies of Muslims," Taliban spokesman, Maulvi Omar said. A series of incidents along the border, including drone aircraft missile attacks and cross-border firing, have fuelled fears in Pakistan that the US military may be moving to a more offensive strategy having hitherto refrained from unleashing ground forces in Pakistani territory. Separately, unknown gunmen kidnapped two Turkish nationals working on a construction project in western Afghanistan. "The Turkish engineers were working on a project in the town of Islam Qala, bordering Iran, where they were kidnapped from a vehicle," police official said. A Turkish Foreign Ministry official in Ankara said the two abducted engineers were Gokhan Gul and Erhan Gunduz who were both working for the Turkish construction company Gulsen Insaat. Meanwhile, more than 20 Taliban-linked rebels were killed in separate clashes, one of them in an area of northeastern Afghanistan where nine US soldier were killed. The police and administration chiefs of the district where the US troops were attacked on Sunday were meanwhile arrested on suspicion of co-operating with the militants. Posted by: Fred 2008-07-16 |
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