ISLAMABAD, 1 October 2005 — Pakistani military helicopters pounded suspected rebel hideouts in mountains near the border with Afghanistan early yesterday. Four soldiers were killed in the firefights which continued overnight, officials said.
Army helicopter gunships began pounding the suspected militant hideout in the North Waziristan tribal region following a clash with militants.
Military spokesman Maj.-Gen. Shaukat Sultan said as well as the four deaths, several Pakistani soldiers had been wounded. The militants were also believed to have suffered heavy casualties, he said.
“There was heavy resistance from the other side,” Sultan said.
Sultan said the operation — launched Thursday on a tip that militants were hiding in the area — was still going on.
“Our troops have surrounded them, and the operation will continue until they are killed or captured,” he said.
He said the military had not counted the bodies of militants. A security said that intercepted communications indicated some 20-30 militants had been killed.
Miran Shah has been the scene of several army operations against foreign militants with suspected Al-Qaeda links and their local supporters in recent weeks.
This week, the army arrested five tribesmen, including Ahmad Haqqani, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, and seized a cache of weapons in raids on suspected militant hideouts in North Waziristan.
Pakistan, a key ally of the United States in its war on terror, has deployed about 80,000 troops near Afghanistan to capture remnants of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
Pakistan has been trying to clear its lawless tribal areas on the Afghan border of militants for the past two years.
Hundreds of militants and Pakistani soldiers have been killed in clashes.
Many Al-Qaeda militants and their Taleban allies were believed to have slipped into Pakistan after US-led forces ousted the Taleban government in Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Sultan, commenting on speculation a militant leader might be holding out in the North Waziristan region, said the military had no evidence of any leader there.
“Certainly, there were reports about militants but there were no reports of any high-value target,” he said.
76 Drug Traffickers Arrested
In a continued clampdown on drug traffickers, Pakistan’s anti-narcotics force (ANF) has arrested at least 76 drug peddlers, including two senior members of an international narcotics gang, so far this year, an ANF official said yesterday.
“All the traffickers including Ibrahim, a Ghanaian national and Nigerian-origin Tori Banta, also known as “lack queen” were arrested in the Northwestern Frontier Province while attempting to smuggle narcotics worth millions of dollars,” ANF force commander in the region, Brig. Najamul Hassan Jamil, said.
Jamil said that ANF officials were questioning the traffickers, who were arrested in separate raids, to extract “useful” information about their gangs and local contacts.
He did not give further details but said all the arrests were made on intelligence tip offs. ANF officials have called for increased assistance from the US including helicopters, gunships, greater ground mobility and electronic intelligence capability to fight heavily armed traffickers at the Afghan border.
