Government jets pounded Taliban hideouts and killed at least 15 fighters yesterday as suspected Taliban militants elsewhere set off a roadside bomb that killed seven paramilitary soldiers in a rugged tribal region of northwestern Pakistan, officials said.
Pakistan’s president, meanwhile, vowed to push on with an army offensive in a key insurgent stronghold until all the militants are wiped out.
The paramilitary soldiers were traveling through the Khyber region, famed for the pass that is the main route for ferrying supplies to US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, when the bomb went off, said local official Ghulam Farooq Khan. The men died before they reached a hospital.
That attack came as Pakistani jets bombed three hideouts of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud in the Orkazai tribal region, killing at least eight militants and wounding several others, intelligence officials said. Another airstrike, about 70km from the first one and near the Afghan border, killed seven militants in the Kurram tribal region, the officials said.
Access to the tribal areas, semi-autonomous regions where the Pakistani government has long had only minimal control, is heavily restricted, so independently verifying government reports is all but impossible.
Pakistan has been involved in an escalating fight with Taliban fighters. Two weeks ago, Pakistan launched a major offensive in South Waziristan, viewed as the main stronghold in the country of both the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Officials insist the offensive will continue until every militant is wiped out, an apparent reaction to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s warning that al-Qaeda also needs to be targeted.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, speaking to members of his Pakistan People’s Party, said on Friday that “there was no turning back ... until the complete elimination of the militants,” according to a statement from his office.
Earlier this week, during a visit to Pakistan, Clinton said she found it “hard to believe” that no one in Pakistan’s government knew where al-Qaeda’s leadership was hiding and that once the current offensive is finished, “the Pakistanis will have to go on to try to root out other terrorist groups, or we’re going to be back facing the same threats.”
US officials have long said Osama bin Laden and top al-Qaeda lieutenants accused in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks operate out of the region along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan — a region that includes South Waziristan.
Pakistan has publicly reacted to Clinton’s chiding with a mixture of acceptance and resentment.
“If we are honest, we cannot deny that much of what she said was true,” the News newspaper said in an editorial yesterday, while adding that US policies — like foreign policy anywhere — revolve around self-interest.
“There is nothing noble about Washington’s focus on Islamabad.
“But it is possible that at this particular moment in history the interests of both nations coincide,” the newspaper said.
Major General Athar Abbas, the army’s chief spokesman, told Geo TV on Friday that the offensive would not simply disperse militants to other parts of the country.
“They are running, but our strategy is not to let them run,” he said.
The military’s goal was to “kill the maximum of them in this area [South Waziristan] because after running they will destroy the peace in other areas,” Abbas said.
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