Friday launched a new offensive against Al-Qaeda-linked fighters on its northwest border, pounding an Al-Qaeda training camp and hideouts used by fugitive foreign fighters in a major air and ground campaign. Thousands of Pakistani troops backed by Cobra helicopter gunships targeted the camp and two hideouts near Shakai village in South Waziristan, military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said, killing at least five more militants and raising the death toll from three days of clashes to 58.
| Hey! Not bad! I'm assuming that's the Bad Guy corpse count, rather than Bad Guys, army, and civilians, of course... |
We have retrieved five bodies of militants. Others are lying on the ground, Sultan told a news conference at army headquarters in Rawalpindi. A statement issued by the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) said the operation had been launched after the political process failed to produce results.
The government was left with no choice but to respond in order to establish its writ and eliminate these foreign elements that, along with their accomplices, had not only taken the local population hostage but were also a nuisance for the entire area, the ISPR said. Pakistan s Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat told the federal parliament that a new operation had been launched and would last until objectives are met, state television reported. A senior security official called the strike a major offensive. Army helicopters have pounded the hideouts of foreign militants after which troops landed from helicopters and launched ground operations to capture militants, the official told AFP.
| That's a little more professional than the last attempt. And a lot more productive than sending tribal lashkars to drive around the countryside, beating drums and making faces... |
Major General Sultan said the security forces had targeted three sites including a training center, two Al-Qaeda safe houses and a compound which Al-Qaeda financer Abd Al-Hadi Al-Iraqi had been visiting.
| He was gone long before they got close, of course... |
At this moment we have this information that there were about eight to 10 fighters in the compound.... visited by Al-Iraqi. The house is on a mountain top with a Nullah (drain) from where they can have a covered passage to come and get out, he said. Sultan said the second target was a set of houses, compounds which Al-Qaeda foreign fighters used as a transit point. Another house is a training area, there is a firing range and other training facilities where they (Al-Qaeda) were training militants for terrorist activities. At this moment there were about 20 to 30 foreign fighters present in the area.
| That's all? The rest are busy across the border, I guess... |
The training camp lay on the outskirts of Shakai, near district capital Wana less than 30 kilometers from the border, where seven weeks ago army commanders and tribal elders hugged each other as they announced a truce and amnesty deal. The amnesty was offered after the army wound down its largest ever offensive against the militants late March and resorted to political negotiations to convince the fighters to lay down arms and register with authorities. The military said that its offer of amnesty, made in the April 24 Shakai Agreement, had been abused by foreign elements who fired on army positions Wednesday, triggering three days of clashes. Following the provocation and terrorist activities of foreign elements in violation of the Shakai agreement, Pakistan security forces are appropriately responding against the unknown and confirmed hideouts of miscreants, it said in a formal statement early Friday. The military accused local facilitators of abusing efforts to reach a non-military solution through the amnesty deal and said Wednesday attacks on army posts were an abuse of the government's sincere offer of amnesty.
| Yeah, y'might call it that... |
Some 300 to 400 mainly Chechen and Uzbek Al-Qaeda-linked fighters are believed to be hiding in the region. Some Arabs and Chinese Uighurs are said to be among them. The ground and air offensive came a day after a top military commander survived an assassination attempt in southern port city of Karachi when his convoy was ambushed by unidentified gunmen. Seven soldiers and three policemen were killed in the attack. The interior minister told Reuters the government suspected a link between the fighting and an attempt to kill the military commander in Karachi on Thursday. Yes there is a link between the two and we have some found clues, he said, but declined to give details.
| Y'mean, like, Nek Muhammad called it before it happened? |
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