AZHAR MASOOD | ARAB NEWS
ISLAMABAD: Fierce fighting erupted in the volatile Swat Valley of Pakistan yesterday, killing 36 people including five soldiers and undermining the government’s strategy of offering peace deals to pro-Taleban insurgents.
A round-the-clock curfew was imposed after the latest fighting in the former tourist region, a day after militants there abducted at least 25 police and paramilitary troops, officials said. Clashes Tuesday also left two troops and two militants dead.
The latest attacks brought a two-month-old peace deal between the government and the rebels to the brink of collapse.
The NATO yesterday claimed that Pakistan’s talks with extremists have resulted in a 40 percent rise in rebel activity in Afghanistan.
The Taleban movement warned that it would launch suicide attacks across the country if the military failed to halt the operation against followers of Maulana Fazlullah.
A Pakistani military statement said up to 70 militants attempted to storm a security checkpost in the troubled Matta district of Swat yesterday morning.
“The attack was successfully repulsed resulting in the death of 25 miscreants and many injured,” the statement said. Two Pakistani Army officers and three soldiers were “martyred” in the fighting, it added. Chief military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said an important Taleban commander, Tor Mullah, a close associate of Fazlullah, was slain in the fighting.
Up to 60 militants later entered the main bazaar in Matta and warned people to close their shops, the army statement said. Security forces reinforced the local police station and the rebels fled, it said.
Local army spokesman Maj. Mohammad Farooq said that the clashes lasted between four and five hours. He said authorities imposed a curfew on the entire valley “until further orders.” Separately, militants burned down a girls’ school in Swat and blew up a hostel in Pakistan’s only ski resort in the nearby town of Malam Jabba, which had been damaged in an attack last month, local officials said.
The fighting also came a day after militants abducted 30 police and paramilitary soldiers in Swat.
The army said, “In view of the increased hostile activities of the miscreants, security forces have been ordered to take appropriate measures to counter their actions effectively.” Mountainous Swat was a thriving tourist resort known as the “Switzerland of Pakistan” until last year, when Fazlullah launched a violent campaign to enforce Shariah in the region.
Under the May peace deal, the government agreed to gradually pull out troops and introduce an Islamic justice system. In exchange, the rebels said they would halt attacks and surrender arms.
A spokesman for Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan, the country’s main militant grouping, said the army offensive “made a mockery” of the rebels’ attempts to abide by the peace deal. “We will launch anti-government attacks across the country if the military operation in Swat is not immediately stopped,” the spokesman, Maulvi Omar, said.
The fate of the 30 abducted security officials would be decided “very soon,” he added.
A spokesman for the Taleban in Swat, Muslim Khan, rejected the military’s casualty claims, saying many soldiers had been killed and an armored vehicle destroyed.
“Our suicide bombers are ready. If our Shoura (Taleban council) decides, we will start launching suicide attacks,” Khan said.
The clashes came two days after Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani held talks with US President George W. Bush on Islamabad’s commitment to the US-led “war on terror” launched after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
Also yesterday, officials said Taleban militants had shot dead a woman in the North Waziristan tribal district after accusing her of spying for US forces in Afghanistan.
