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Pakistain: Militants seize checkpoint, abduct 30 policemen in northwest
 (AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - Taliban fighters seized control of the Shamozai area on Wednesday after a day-long siege and fierce battles in the northwest Swat Valley. The militants seized control of a police checkpoint, blew it up and abducted 30 policemen. The action is seen as retaliation after the army recently intensified its operation in the Swat Valley to re-take it from militants, following massive Western pressure on Pakistan to clamp down on extremists in the northwest of the country. "This is a serious offence and the state wil re-establish its writ at all costs," said a security official in Swat on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorised to speak to the media. The official said the local population has been given 24 hours to evacuate Shamozai before the military carries out a major air and ground offensive to recapture the town "very shortly". Several areas of Swat are reported to remain under curfew for the eleventh day amid the evacuation of locals on a massive scale and continued shelling of militants' hideouts. "There is a revolt in the Federally administered tribal areas (FATA) and in North West Frontier Province and the masses should be awakened and prepared to face all kind of situations," the chief minister of NWFP, Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, said in a statement issued shortly after the fall of Shamozai. Hoti's comments came as militants destroyed 10 container trucks of NATO supplies in the Landi Kotal in Khyber Agency bordering Afghanistan. The militants set fire to the trucks in a parking lot early on Wednesday. The 10 trucks had managed on Tuesday to cross a bridge in the Khyber pass before this was blown up by militants, severing a key NATO supply route. Officials estimate it will take at least 10 days to rebuild the bridge, located near the Ali Masjid fort on the strategic Peshawar-Torkham Road. Every day 300 to 400 NATO supply containers are dispatched from two ports, Bin Qasim and Karachi Port, both situated in Karachi, bound for the Afgan cities of Kandahar and Kabul. Eighty percent of NATO supplies pass through Khyber Agency on their way to the biggest American base in Bagram, Afghanistan and to Kandahar Airfield through Quetta and Chaman. A large part of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province is now in the hands of Taliban militants, who are preparing to use it as their base for a fresh Spring offensive against NATO forces in neighbouring Afghanistan. Abducted policemen released in Pakistan Taliban have released 30 Pakistani security personnel who were taken hostage in an overnight operation in the restive Swat valley. Taliban Spokesman Muslim Khan said Wednesday that the decision was made after the men promised to halt their cooperation with the Islamabad government and quit their jobs, A Press TV correspondent reported. The men were abducted after hundreds of insurgents took over a police station in the Shamoza area in the troubled valley on late Tuesday after a daylong gun battle. Posted by: Fred 2009-02-05 |
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