|
Fight rages on in Waziristan
Thousands of Pakistani soldiers backed by artillery and helicopter gunships made limited progress on Friday advancing into a 10-square-mile pocket of farming villages where 300 to 600 suspected militants have been surrounded near the border with Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said. Senior Pakistani officials said they continued to believe that a senior figure, possibly Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may be trapped with the group in the South Waziristan tribal area. But it appeared Friday that blasting the militants out of the fortified positions they have occupied in hundreds of fortress-like family compounds could take days, and dozens of lives. Brig. Mehmood Shah, director of security in Pakistan's tribal areas, said that firing from the militants decreased somewhat on Friday, but suggested that they could be simply conserving ammunition. He said Pakistani paramilitary forces were advancing in two groups, from the east and west, house by house. "They made little progress, they are still facing resistance," said Brigadier Shah, who described the Pakistani advance as "very slow. I think it's going to take time. At least tomorrow, maybe more."A Pakistani official said 17 Pakistani soldiers had been killed in fighting on Thursday and Friday, bringing the government death toll to at least 34 in four days. At least 20 militants died Tuesday, the first day of clashes, according to Pakistani officials. They have not given militant casualty figures since then, but said 18 militants had been detained Tuesday and 8 Friday. Brigadier Shah said the largest number of militants were believed to be Uzbeks, followed by Chechens, Afghans allied with the hard-line Islamist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Arabs and ethnic Uighurs from Xinjiang Province in western China. He confirmed that Pakistani officials had received reports before the clashes that Dr. Zawahiri was moving through the region. In Washington, by late Friday senior American officials were distancing themselves from Pakistan's assertions that its troops had Dr. Zawahiri trapped. "It's not clear to me who's there, if anybody," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on CNN's "Larry King Live." Pakistani officials said militants made two attempts to break out of the cordon Thursday night, but had been forced back. Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, chief spokesman for the Pakistani military, said at a news briefing Friday that two groups of suspected fighters, one heavily armed, had been apprehended. But he said none of those apprehended appeared to be high-level Qaeda members, and he gave no definite information on the possible whereabouts of Dr. Zawahiri. At least 7,000 Pakistani Army and paramilitary troops have established a double cordon around clusters of farmhouses 10 miles west of Wana, according to Pakistani officials. Fighting has centered around the houses of several local tribesman at Kaloosha, and in another area near Shin Warsak a few miles away. Brigadier Shah said the region where fighters were putting up the toughest resistance shifted from Shin Warsak on Thursday to Kaloosha on Friday. General Sultan said American forces were not involved in the fighting, but were assisting with intelligence and surveillance. Pakistani forces, he added, were communicating with the militants through loudspeakers and sending emissaries to tell them to surrender. "The security forces will try to overcome them with minimum use of force," General Sultan said. "We would like to capture them without large-scale destruction, but we have the force available if need be." Earlier in the week, General Musharraf offered an amnesty to anyone who surrendered peacefully, he added. But the militants showed few signs of capitulating. Brigadier Shah said they curse General Musharraf and President Bush over their radios.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-03-20 |
|
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=28625 |