WANA, Pakistan, 17 March 2004 — Pakistani paramilitary forces attacked tribal fighters sheltering Al-Qaeda militants near the rugged Afghan border yesterday and at least 32 people were killed in clashes that raged through the day, officials said.
Heavy exchanges of gunfire erupted at dawn. The tribesman put up stiff resistance and later launched hit-and-run raids on their attackers, a security officer and a witness said.
The fighting came a day before US Secretary of State Colin Powell was due to visit Pakistan. Speaking as he flew to India on Monday, Powell urged Pakistan to ramp up its military activities near the Afghan border.
“The situation is very serious, very intense. There have been casualties,” said a resident of the town of Wana, near the scene of the fighting, 360 km (225 miles) southwest of Islamabad.
Pakistan’s remote tribal lands have been semi-autonomous for decades. Many of the area’s ethnic Pashtun tribesmen support Afghanistan’s ousted Taleban militia, many of whom are also Pashtun.
The Pakistani push came as US forces mounted a spring offensive in southern and eastern Afghanistan, across the border from the tribal areas, aimed at crushing Taleban and Al-Qaeda rebels and catching their leaders, including Osama Bin Laden.
Bin Laden is also thought to be in hiding somewhere along the frontier, and the US military hopes to trap him and others in a “hammer and anvil” operation with Pakistani forces.
A Pakistani security officer said eight paramilitary men had been killed, two of them in an ambush. At least 24 tribal and foreign fighters were killed and several wounded.
Ambulances had taken men away from the fighting near Kaloosha village, a witness said.
A group of paramilitary Frontier Corps men was seen coming under rocket and machine-gun fire but it was not known if there had been any casualties in that firing, he added.
Gunmen on a motorcycle attacked a Frontier Corps convoy while at least one government vehicle was blown up, a resident in the area said.
A Kaloosha resident, Qasim Khan, said paramilitary troops exchanged fire with people inside a fortress-like house. It was unclear who was inside the house, but it was believed to belong to one of seven tribesmen from the Yargulkhel clan accused of harboring Al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects. The seven have refused to surrender to authorities. “We are not allowed to go out of our homes,” Khan told an Associated Press reporter by telephone from the besieged village.
“It’s a fluid situation. There are casualties on both sides, said military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan.
Mehmood Shah, a government administrator for the tribal areas based in the northwestern city of Peshawar, said yesterday’s operation involved about 700 paramilitary soldiers.
