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Pakistani military pounds rebel area

Residents of Dara Adam Khel, a hideout of militants near Peshawar, flee during a Pakistani army operation on Friday. PHOTO: AP

Hundreds of panicked families fled an area in northwestern Pakistan where security forces pounded militants' hideouts, killing 30 of them, officials and residents said yesterday.

The evacuation from Dara Adam Khel, a town in the tribal belt which lies 40km from the provincial capital of Peshawar, began on Friday, shortly before the offensive which authorities said was launched against militants who hijacked four truckloads of military supplies a day earlier.

Two paramilitary troopers also died and 10 were wounded in Friday's clashes around Dara Adam Khel, located along a key strategic route linking Pakistan's northwestern frontier with the rest of the country, an army statement said.

Iftikhar Afridi, 34, told reporters in Peshawar that he had walked for nearly 10km with his wife and six children before he found a passenger bus to take them to the city.

He said hundreds of were people leaving their town, trying to reach the safety of Peshawar.

"I was also worried for the safety of my family," he said.

Afridi said both militants and government forces were using small arms, rocket launchers and mortars.

Pakistan has carried out scores of military operations against militants in North and South Waziristan bordering Afghanistan. But this was the first time that the violence has spread to the relatively calm tribal region of Khyber where Dara Adam Khel is located and which connects Peshawar -- the army's regional headquarters with the battlefields of Waziristan, a lawless region regarded as a stronghold for Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile, militants attacked a checkpoint in Dir, another town 250km northeast of Peshawar yesterday, killing two policemen and one soldier, said Afzal Khan, a local police official.

In the past two weeks, militants have increased attacks on government forces in the region. Hundreds of fighters have launched assaults on remote military forts, drawing comparisons with Taliban tactics against NATO forces in southern Afghanistan.

The military claims 34 soldiers and 255 militants have died since Jan. 14, mostly in South Waziristan, where it has deployed infantry, aircraft and tanks in a drive to clear the lawless, mountainous area of insurgents.

The casualty figures, difficult to verify independently in an insecure and largely inaccessible region, have been disputed by the militants.

Maulvi Umer, a spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban, a militant coalition led by Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, dismissed the latest claim of 30 militants dead in Dara Adam Khel, saying only a few of its fighters were wounded. He said six soldiers were killed.
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