ISLAMABAD, 13 November 2004 — Over 2,000 Pakistani soldiers backed by artillery and sophisticated weapons launched a major operation yesterday against foreign militants and a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, Abdullah Mehsud, accused of targeting security forces in a tense tribal region near Afghanistan, a military commander said.
Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, the top commander in northwestern Pakistan, said about 2,000 soldiers also took part in the operation that began at dawn in South Waziristan to capture “foreign miscreants” and Mehsud.
“The troops have met some resistance and the operation will continue till the area is purged of miscreants,” he told reporters in Peshawar. The troops were trying to secure militant strongholds northeast of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan’s tribal district, he said. Yesterday’s operation is part of a broader military drive launched in March to flush out Al-Qaeda.
Mehsud is accused of masterminding the kidnapping last month of two Chinese engineers in South Waziristan where they were building a dam. One of the Chinese men was killed and the other was rescued alive by commandos.
Mehsud, 28, was freed in March after about two years’ detention at the US prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Since his return he has emerged as a rebel leader, opposing Pakistan’s army as it hunts remnants of Al-Qaeda in the country’s semiautonomous tribal regions.
Hussain said the troops this week searched Mehsud’s home in the South Waziristan village of Nano, about 320 km from Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, but found no one. He said Mehsud might be hiding in caves in the area.
Hussain vowed the current operation, around Nano and surrounding villages, would continue until Mehsud and other “miscreants” were arrested. “The miscreants are in total disarray. They are on the run and we are chasing them,” he said.
He said the army was using artillery and helicopter gunships and facing some resistance. In the first few hours of the operation, troops had seized a cache of weapons from militant hide-outs. It was not clear if there had been any casualties.
Pakistan is a key ally of the United States in its war on terror, and authorities here say hundreds of Central Asian, Afghan and Arab militants are in hiding in South Waziristan _ also a possible hiding place of Osama Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahri.
Pakistan has about 70,000 troops deployed along the Afghan border and has launched a series of bloody military operations this year that have left scores of soldiers, militants and civilians dead.
On Thursday, five local tribal elders wanted for sheltering foreign militants accepted a government amnesty, signing an agreement that they would not maintain such ties in the future, said Inam ul-Haq, an elder who helped negotiate the deal.
The News daily reported that their tribes have agreed to a one million rupee ($16,800) surety to guarantee the conduct of each man — Noor Islam, Maulvi Abbas Khan, Maulvi Abdul Aziz, Sharif Khan and Omar Khan Wazir.
The five men are associates of renegade tribesman Nek Mohammed who was killed in a missile attack by the army in June after he was accused of violating an earlier accord.
