Correspondents in Peshawar, Pakistan | April 29
A MILITARY offensive to flush out Taliban militants has displaced about 30,000 people in northwest Pakistan, a provincial minister said last night.
Residents said terrified people, mostly women and children, were continuing to flee the area with their belongings after Pakistan troops and helicopter gunships launched Operation Black Thunder to drive out the Taliban.
One local charity said yesterday it had registered 2241 displaced families.
"Up to 30,000 people have left Maidan in Lower Dir district over the past few days.
"We are making arrangements for them in Peshawar, Nowshera and Timargarah districts," minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said.
Mr Hussain said the Government remained "determined to fully implement the (operation) but some outsiders who do not want peace have infiltrated in Buner and Dir districts to sabotage the accord". Pakistan troops and helicopter gunships launched the offensive in Lower Dir, near the Taliban-held Swat valley, on Sunday, killing about 50 insurgents, officials said. The military said eight paramilitary soldiers had been killed.
Heavy artillery shelling by the paramilitary Frontier Corps troops continued yesterday, a senior military officer said.
"We destroyed several militants' hideouts in heavy artillery shelling of suspected bases in the area," the officer said.
Following the military push into Dir, a district on the Afghanistan border, militants described their peace pact with the Government as "worthless". Pakistan agreed in February to impose Islamic law in the Taliban-held Swat valley and surrounding districts of the Malakand Division if militants ended a rebellion that included beheading opponents and burning schools for girls.
However, the concession appeared to embolden the Taliban, which staged a foray last week into neighbouring Buner district, just 100km from the capital, Islamabad, reportedly patrolling other areas in the region as well.
Losing Lower or Upper Dir would be a blow not only for Pakistan but for US efforts to shore up the faltering war effort against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
US officials worry the pact could turn Swat into another haven for militants and encourage extremists to call for Islamic law in other areas of the country.
Western allies have expressed frustration that Pakistan is focusing on arch-rival India, distracting the Government from dealing with extremist sanctuaries on the Afghan border.
Afghan police clashed with Taliban fighters outside the capital, Kabul, leaving a dozen militants and an officer dead, while bomb blasts killed five more policemen, the Government said yesterday.
The fresh violence was linked to the insurgency led by the Taliban, who are battling to wrest back power after being ousted from government by the 2001 US-led invasion. The militants were killed on Monday in a sweep to clear Taliban from Musayi district about 15km south of Kabul, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary.
"The head of the district criminal investigation department was wounded and later died in hospital.
"Twelve enemies were also killed," he said.
Separately, a rocket landed inside an international military base on the outskirts of Kabul early yesterday, wounding three French soldiers, a French military spokesman said.
Meanwhile, US officials yesterday denied claims from Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari that Osama bin Laden was dead.
The officials said yesterday that the planner of the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington was most likely hiding in the mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. "We continue to believe that bin Laden is alive," one US official said.
Source: The Australian
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