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Rebels fire at Pakistani air force base

Suspected militants fired rockets at an air force base in northwest Pakistan early yesterday and also bombed a girls school but there were no casualties, police said.

Two rockets landed in an open field at Peshawar air force base, while a third one exploded on a road near the area after midnight but caused no damage or casualties, senior police official Mohammad Tahir Khan said.

Police have registered a case against unknown attackers and have started their investigations, he said.

Part of Peshawar air force base is used for domestic and international passenger flights. Peshawar is the provincial capital of North West Frontier Province which borders Afghanistan.

GIRLS SCHOOL

Separately, suspected militants bombed a girls high school in Michni neighborhood of Peshawar which caused damage to its main gate and boundary wall, another police official said.

Peshawar is located close to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal zones where government forces have launched an operation against pro-Taliban and al-Qaeda linked militants.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a police checkpost in the Swat valley yesterday, killing six people including two children and a policeman, the military said.

The attack, near Swat's main town of Mingora, came a day after the military said it had cleared the scenic valley of most militants led by a firebrand pro-Taliban cleric, whose insurgent followers had clashed with troops in the area for weeks.

The attacker was driving from Matta, a town known as a militant stronghold, to Mingora.

"Two children, three civilians and a policeman were killed. One policeman was wounded," said Amjad Iqbal, a military spokesman in Swat.

He said the head of the bomber had been found at the site of the blast.

DECAPITATED BODIES

In a separate incident, residents said three decapitated bodies had been found near the town of Matta. Their bodies were later brought to Mingora.

A reporter saw the bodies with their hands and feet tied with ropes. Iqbal said the slain men were "local Taliban" and might have been killed by residents, but there was no independent verification.

Last month, the army launched an offensive in Swat which the commander in charge said on Saturday had succeeded in clearing the militants from most of the valley, pushing cleric Maulana Fazlullah and his followers into remote valleys to the northwest.

Major General Nasser Janjua told reporters in Mingora on Saturday his troops had killed 290 militants, who he said were supported by the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

A further 143 were captured in the offensive involving 20,000 troops, he added, saying six of his men had been killed.

Janjua said Fazlullah had been able to whip up a following of about 5,000 people with his calls for strict Islamic law broadcast over his private FM radio station.

But most of Fazlullah's recruits from the valley had melted back into the population since the offensive began, leaving him with a hard core of about 500 followers, including many foreigners, Janjua said.

He said some Uzbeks were with Fazlullah but declined to say where others were from.

Violence surged in Pakistan, mainly in the northwest, since a military assault on Red Mosque, a stronghold of militants, in the capital Islamabad in July. Nearly 105 people were killed in the operation. More than 800 people have been killed in ensuing violence across the country.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led war on terrorism, cited growing militancy as one of the main reasons behind imposition of emergency rule by him last month.

He plans to lift the emergency rule on Saturday.
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