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Pakistani military to target Taliban leadership

Internally displaced civilians fleeing from military operations against Taliban militants in South Waziristan sit in a queue outside a registration office in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, yesterday. PHOTO: AFP

Pakistan’s military promised yesterday to target the Taliban leadership in a ground and air offensive launched against the Taliban in South Waziristan, which it said had killed 78 militants so far.

“The last 24 hours, reportedly 18 terrorists have been killed in various incidents and security forces losses are two soldiers and 12 injured,” Major General Athar Abbas told the first news conference on the operation.

He said nine soldiers and 78 militants had been killed since the operation began early on Saturday.

The figures were impossible to confirm with the battleground sealed off to journalists and all communications in the area shut down.

Ground forces have massed on the western, eastern and northwestern outskirts of Kotkai, the hometown of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Hakimullah Mehsud and key Taliban leader Qari Hussain, readying for an assault.

“The high-level targets are the leadership. We hope to get the leadership,” said Abbas, the army’s chief spokesman. “The forces have taken over the heights, features around Kotkai. Kotkai is the hometown of Qari Hussain, formerly known as the mentor of suicide bombs.”

Commanders have been drawing up battle plans for months for what is likely to prove the army’s toughest challenge to date in its war against Islamist militants in the region.

“We wanted to muster our strength, get our resources together. We are an army that does not have unlimited resources,” Abbas said. “We were waiting to have sufficient resources available to start the operation.”

Concerns, however, are mounting that the assault will spark another refugee crisis ahead of heavy snow in a bitterly cold winter.

US officials consulted Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders as troops advanced toward Taliban bastions, heavily mined roads forcing armored convoys to move painstakingly slowly, a military official said.

The insurgents have mined roads with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) of the type deployed to devastating effect against NATO and US troops in Afghanistan, the official said, adding that the Taliban could be luring troops in.

“Resistance is not stiff, but the major problem is the presence of IEDs. We have to send soldiers by foot to clear the IEDs for troops to advance,” he said.

Troops were moving with their flanks protected to prevent the kind of attacks on exposed formations that have caused heavy army losses in past operations, the official said.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani urged the international community to provide financial assistance for relief and reconstruction at talks with US General David Petraeus yesterday, his office said.

Some of the 100,000 people who have fled to Dera Ismail Khan, on foot and stuffed into pick-up trucks weighed down with bedding and animals, spoke of intensifying fighting and air strikes targeting villages.

“I decided to leave when my neighbor’s house was destroyed by jet fighters,” said Rahim Dad Mehsud, a laborer from Tiarza who said he walked three days to leave South Waziristan with 12 relatives.

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