Wazoo, ahead of the final push to flush out snuffies from their last redoubt near the Afghan border.The statement by the Inter-Services Public Relations came the day it was announced that 200 displaced families were returning to Mirali. In the second phase of the repatriation, 414 families of the Edak tribe have so far returned to Mirali sub-district. The families were escorted by army troops.
The Fata Disaster Management Authority said the process of repatriation would continue during the month of Ramazan. The Edak tribe was the last to leave North Waziristan and is the first to return.
"We are now ready to move in," a security bigshot said, adding: "We are now dominating all the mountain ridges around Shawal. This will be the last phase of Operation Zarb-e-Azb
..the Pak offensive against Qaeda in Pakistain and the Pak Taliban in North Wazoo. The name refers to the sword of the Prophet (PTUI!)...
."
The military which remained stuck in Dattakhel, 55km west of North Waziristan's regional headquarters of Miranshah
... headquarters of al-Qaeda in Pakistain and likely location of Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Haqqani network has established a
ministatein centered on the town with courts, tax offices and lots of madrassas...
, has gained ground and moved closer to the thickly-forested valley.
Like Tirah, this will be the first time troops will be moving into Shawal, an area infested with local and foreign snuffies who have fled from Miranshah and Mirali.
According to ISPR, Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif visited combat areas in North Waziristan on Friday and commended professionalism, sacrifices and high morale of troops who had taken part in the first round of Shawal operation.
The military earlier announced that it had successfully completed the Operation Khyber-II, flushing out both local and foreign snuffies from Khyber Agency
, adjacent to 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.
, and securing important positions.
According to ISPR, Gen Raheel was briefed by the formation commander on the progress of Zarb-e-Azb and future plans to cleanse the remaining pockets in Shawal of terrorists.
Zarb-e-Azb was launched in June last year and the army claimed that 90 per cent area of the troubled tribal region had been cleared. The repatriation of internally displaced persons to the cleared areas is under way.
The army chief praised the special integrated teams which had carried out intelligence-based operations in urban areas and severed the links between terrorists' sanctuaries in remote areas and their sleeper cells in cities and directed that these operations be continued to apprehend all forces of Evil and their controllers and financiers without any discrimination and irrespective of the cost.
"We will not stop unless we achieve our end objective of a terror-free Pakistain," the ISPR quoted Gen Raheel as saying.