Pakistani intelligence agents have arrested two men on suspicion of links with the Al Qaeda terror network, intelligence officials said yesterday. The men were arrested in the northwestern city of Chitral near the Afghan border, officials said. They gave the men’s names as Abdur Rahman alias Abu Obaida, and Suleman Tahir. Rahman was described as an Arab, but his nationality wasn’t given. The other suspect is a Pakistani. The intelligence officials said the suspects were being questioned in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.
Meanwhile, Pakistani forces continued to search houses in a remote tribal area near the Afghan border for foreign fighters as the latest militant attack left seven police officers injured, officials said. The predawn rocket and grenade attack was in the town of Dera Ismail Khan, which borders the tribal district of South Waziristan, scene of an ongoing military campaign to capture of kill suspected foreign Al Qaeda fighters. One of the injured policemen was in serious condition in the hospital, the town’s deputy inspector general of police Habibur Rehman said. "We believe the attack was in retaliation for the operation in neighbouring South Waziristan tribal belt," he said.
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Pakistani troops along with tribal forces meanwhile conducted a house to house search in the Shakai valley near South Waziristan’s main town Wana for the fourth day but found neither any fugitives nor weapons, officials said. The search operation followed a massive air and ground offensive in the valley earlier this month. Pakistan’s military launched a five-day operation in the mountainous Shakai valley, 25km northeast of Wana to destroy several Al Qaeda hideouts. The operation was in response to an attack by militants on a military post on June 9 which left 14 security personnel dead. |