PESHAWAR: Pakistan's military said yesterday troops were locked in fierce street battles with Taleban fighters in the northwest, where a rights group accused both sides of killing civilians. Military officials said government forces were advancing on several fronts towards Mingora, the Taliban-held main town in the Swat valley-once a scenic tourist hotspot but ripped apart by a two-year battle to enforce sharia law.The blistering offensive against Islamist militants, who are said to threaten the sovereignty of the nuclear-armed nation, has concentrated increasingly on the valley in what the government calls a mission to "eliminate" militants. "We had to launch a military operation because these people challenged the writ of the government. They declared democracy, parliament, the constitution and judiciary as un-Islamic," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said.
We were left with no option... we will not allow a state within a state," he told a conference of influential Islamic scholars convened to drum up support for the military operation, now bogged down into a fourth week. Pakistan's military said there were fierce clashes in the Taliban-held town of Matta as well as in Kanju, which is a short distance from Mingora, with four soldiers and 14 insurgents killed in the two towns.
In the last 24 hours, 16 militants were also killed, the army said. Footage broadcast on private Pakistani television channel Geo showed armed soldiers standing outside locked shops in the main bazaar in Matta, a bastion of Maulana Fazlullah who has led a two-year uprising to enforce Islamic law. "Troops continue to close in on Mingora, from where Taleban are trying to escape but our strategy is not to let them flee," a security official said.
He said the chief objective in coming days was "to take over the Taliban's main headquarters in Peochar," where commandos opened a new front last week. Intense battles were also reported in Takhta Bund, described as the main Taleban supply route. Elsewhere in northwest Pakistan, troops clashed with Taleban militants, killing 13 rebels in the semi-autonomous Mohmand tribal area near the border with Afghanistan, the paramilitary Frontier Corps said.
Pakistan is under US pressure to crush militants whom Washington has branded as the greatest terror threat to the West. More than 1.45 million people have been displaced across the region by the fighting since May 2, however, raising alarm among humanitarian agencies.
The military says up to 15,000 troops are taking on about 4,000 well-armed fighters in Swat, where Islamabad has ordered a battle to eradicate fighters who advanced to within 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Pakistani capital. US-based Human Rights Watch blamed Taleban militants using "human shields" and Pakistani military strikes for a high loss of civilian life. It quoted residents as saying that the Taleban mined Mingora and "prevented many civilians from fleeing, using them as 'human shields' to deter attack".
The group also said Pakistani forces "appeared to have taken insufficient precautionary measures in aerial and artillery attacks that have caused a high loss of civilian life." Authorities say more than 1,030 militants and at least 53 troops have been killed in a three-pronged onslaught launched in the districts of Lower Dir on April 26, Buner on April 28 and Swat on May 8.
But Pakistani commentators praised the military for moving into towns, warning operations would be deadly but were vital for the military to really flush out Taleban strongholds. "Even US troops never engaged in street battles in Afghanistan," defense and political analyst Talat Masood told AFP. "Obviously there will be more casualties when you face the enemy frontally. Here you are very close to the enemy and directly in their firing range.-AFP