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| India-Pakistan |
| Top militants 'among 1000 dead' |
| 2008-09-26 |
| PAKISTANI troops have killed more than 1000 al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels, including five top commanders, in a month-long offensive near the Afghan border, the military said today. Twenty-seven soldiers also died in the operation in Bajaur, one of Pakistan's seven lawless tribal regions along the porous frontier, said Tariq Khan, inspector general of the paramilitary Frontier Corps. "The overall toll is over 1000 militants,'' Mr Khan said who were taken by helicopter to see the scene of the fighting in remote Bajaur. He said four of the militant commanders appeared to be foreigners: Egyptian Abu Saeed Al-Masri; Abu Suleiman, an Arab; an Uzbek commander named Mullah Mansoor; and an Afghan commander called Manaras. The fifth was a Pakistani commander named only Abdullah, a son of ageing hardline leader Maulvi Faqir Mohammad who is based in Bajaur and has close ties to al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri. Bajaur, which borders the troubled Afghan province of Kunar, has seen some of the fiercest fighting between Pakistani forces and Islamist militants since Islamabad joined the US-led "war on terror'' in 2001. It was also the scene of a missile strike that narrowly missed Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's number two, in January 2006. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #3 "...what militants?" "Top. Militants." |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2008-09-26 17:59 |
| #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden are worth a total of $52 million in rewards. Could buy a lot of chapatis, lentils, and rice. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2008-09-26 14:48 |
| #1 They probably aren't counting all those underarmed, undershod Frontier Corps troops, the ones the various militant groups have been kidnapping in droves for the purpose of beheading practice. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-09-26 04:23 |