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At least six dead in Khyber gunfight: officials
[Dawn] At least six people were killed Saturday in a day-long shootout between Death Eaters and government troops in Pakistain's troubled northwestern tribal region, officials said.The fighting took place as Pak troops, backed by helicopter gunships, carried out a search operation around the town of Bara in the lawless Khyber tribal  district bordering Afghanistan."At least two paramilitary soldiers were martyred and four non-combatants were killed in the day-long shootout," Khyber's deputy administration chief Syed Ahmed Jan told AFP. He added that seven Death Eaters were killed in the fighting. A senior paramilitary official said the Death Eaters belonged to the Taliban-linked Laskhar-e-Islam group that is led by warlord Mangal Bagh ...a former bus driver, now head of the Deobandi bandido group Lashkar-e-Islam and the Terror of Khyber Agency... . Independent verification of the incident is not possible as access to the area is restricted by the military. Some 18,000 people decamped their homes in Khyber in October last year amid fears of a fresh onslaught of fighting between the army and Islamist Death Eaters linked to the Pak Taliban. Pakistain's seven tribal districts near the Afghan border are rife with homegrown Islamic fascisti and are strongholds of Taliban and al Qaeda operatives. Militants have killed more than 4,800 people across Pakistain since government troops raided an krazed killer mosque in Islamabad in July 2007. Posted by: Fred 2012-03-11 |
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