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Pakistani military says 29 Taliban killed near Afghan border
[Dawn] The Pak military said it killed 29 Taliban fighters on Wednesday in the final stage of an operation aimed at forcing hundreds of gun-hung tough guys back across the border into Afghanistan.

Soldiers used artillery, helicopter gunships and fighter jets against the cut-thoats, accused of beheading 17 Pak soldiers in June.

The battle was the culmination of weeks of operations in the remote valleys of the Batwar area of Bajaur tribal agency near the border.

It highlighted once again the difficulty of preventing gun-hung tough guys from crossing the border to launch attacks or flee from Pak or NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants...
forces bolstering the Afghan government.

Around 400 Death Eaters had crossed from Afghanistan into Pakistain on August 23 and attacked villages, said a security bigshot based in Khar, the main town of Bajaur.

The army launched operations that killed around 120 turbans, another security official said from the border town of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
. Twenty-five soldiers also died in the fighting.

"The Death Eaters escaped to their sanctuaries in Afghanistan and even left the bodies of their slain fighters," said the Peshawar-based official.

He said the armed forces were now establishing posts along that section of the Afghan border to thwart future incursions.

A front man for the Death Eaters confirmed the attacks were staged by fighters from several regions.

Pakistain and the United States, which has by far the largest foreign contingent in Afghanistan, have accused each other of failing to secure the border.

Some US officials say Pakistain deliberately lets some gun-hung tough guys through, a suggestion Pakistain strongly rejects.

Joint efforts to secure the long and mountainous border were hampered by a NATO strike against a Pak base last November that killed 24 Pak soldiers and severely damaged relations between Pakistain and the United States for several months.

Posted by: Fred 2012-09-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=352349