ISLAMABAD, 2 March 2006 — Forty-five suspected foreign terrorists were killed yesterday in a well-planned morning military action in a village located on the Pak-Afghan border between Miranshah and Khost.
Confirming this, chief spokesman of the armed forces Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said one soldier of the army was also killed in the action. The action was initiated by the Pakistan Army having aerial cover of Cobra attack helicopters. “The attack was launched on a suspected training camp of the Taleban and other foreign terrorists,” said Sultan.
Political agent of North Waziristan Zaheerul Islam confirmed the strike.
As news of the strike spread in the rugged northwestern region, tribesmen who sympathize with the militants came out of their homes and began firing in the air. A mosque loudspeaker urged people to “wage jihad against the army.”
The offensive was in North Waziristan, a region controlled by fiercely independent, well-armed tribes believed to be sheltering Al-Qaeda fugitives and Taleban remnants. The militants frequently cross over the long, porous Afghan-Pakistan border.
Three helicopter gunships attacked the militants’ mountain hide-out near Saidgi, a village about 15 kilometers west of Miranshah, Sultan said.
The slain men — most of whom were from Central Asian and Arab countries — included an Al-Qaeda-linked Chechen commander, identified only by his code name, Imam, the army official said. He died when a helicopter fired on a vehicle he was fleeing in, said an army official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“This Chechen commander Imam was behind most of the attacks against Pakistani security forces along the Pakistan-Afghan border,” said the official. “He was an important man for Al-Qaeda linked militants, and he died with his three bodyguards.”
One helicopter hit a bus with gunfire during the raid, killing a female passenger, said the injured driver, Sabbir Khan, from a hospital bed. The driver said a 20-year-old student on the bus was also injured.
Pakistan has been under pressure from the US and Afghanistan to be more aggressive in flushing out the militants and sealing off the border.
— With input from agencies
