ISLAMABAD: More than 50 people were killed in a suspected suicide bombing, shelling by army jets and artillery at positions of Islamic militants, in northwestern Pakistan, security officials and media reports said yesterday.
At least 24 insurgents, including Al-Qaeda-linked Uzbek fighters, died in the restive tribal district of Bajaur, which borders Afghanistan, an intelligence official said. The shelling that started late Wednesday and continued yesterday in four areas of the district, also destroyed half a dozen bunkers and an ammunition depot belonging to the militants.
“According to the preliminary reports, two dozen miscreants were killed,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said.
“Around a dozen of them are Uzbeks.” He said the Uzbeks were believed to have come from Afghanistan to fight Pakistani security forces.
In the same district, six people were killed and seven injured in a blast outside a mosque in Badan village. Rehmatullah, a tribal elder, who was heading a Lashkar (traditional army) raised by the Mohmand tribe against the Taleban, was among the killed.
Separately, army aircraft bombarded militants in two villages in troubled district of Swat in North-Western Frontier Province (NWFP), leaving “between 15 and 20 miscreants,” dead, another official said.
Six members of the same family died and 16 more injured when a strayed mortar shell hit a house of Safeer Gul in Ganj Alam area of the district, Urdu-language Aaj news channel reported. Seven women and a man were killed when artillery fire hit two houses in Khawazakhela district of Swat, police said.
Pakistan has been under pressure from the United States to do more to go after Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants in ethnic Pashtun lands. At the same time, US forces have stepped up missile strikes by pilotless drone aircraft against militant targets on Pakistani territory, angering Islamabad and straining relations between the allies.
A militant Taleban group warned yesterday of reprisals in Pakistan if there was another US drone attack, as the government condemned the latest missile strike in its territory.
Top Pakistani Taleban leader Hafiz Gul Bahadur warned he would mount revenge attacks if the US carried out further strikes in tribal territory after missiles fired from a drone Wednesday killed six people, including a major Al-Qaeda operative.
Bahadur’s group has been accused by the United States of launching attacks across the border in Afghanistan.
“We will start revenge attacks across other districts if the US drone attacks do not stop after Nov. 20,” Taleban spokesman Ahmadullah Ahmadi said in a statement.
Speaking in Parliament, Pakistani Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani denounced the latest US spy drone attack. “These attacks are adding to our problems. They are intolerable and we do not support them,” Gilani told the National Assembly.
The Foreign Ministry also summoned Anne Patterson, the American ambassador to Islamabad, to lodge a strong protest over the air raids that have fueled public anger, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said in the capital.
