ISLAMABAD, 6 March 2006 — Pakistani forces yesterday beat back a terrorist attack on an army cantonment in the border town of Miranshah, killing over 100 raiders. The Saturday midnight attack that also targeted the local telephone exchange left at least five government soldiers dead. The attack was carried out by Al-Qaeda-linked tribesmen and foreigners, mostly Chechen and Afghan, Interior Ministry sources told Arab News.
Hundreds of people lugging bags and bundles of clothes fled the northwestern town.
The heavy fighting — some of the worst in the North Waziristan region in years — died down early yesterday in the area, where well-armed, fiercely independent tribes have long resisted government control, said Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the army’s spokesman.
Sultan said there was sporadic firing yesterday afternoon in Miranshah, the main hotspot of the unrest. But the fighters — a mix of tribesmen and foreign militants — retreated from government buildings they had occupied, and soldiers controlled the town again, he said.
The foreigners crossed over from neighboring Afghanistan and would be “confronted and eliminated,” Sultan said, adding that it was not immediately known whether the foreigners outnumbered the tribesmen.
A military statement said security forces retaliated after militants attacked the cantonment from three directions with rockets and small and heavy arms. “The security forces responded effectively and inflicted heavy casualties on them,” the statement said, adding the “miscreants” had been evicted from a telephone exchange and other government buildings they had seized.
Miranshah’s streets and bazaars were empty. Smoke billowed from a bank building hit by an artillery shell. Another shell tore a hole in the home of a doctor who lived on the premises of a state-run hospital. Shells also pocked the side of the hospital. Both sides used mortars and other heavy weapons, and it was not immediately known who hit the buildings. Security forces had fortified themselves inside a heavily guarded base, and troops fired into the air if anyone came within 300 meters of them.
Hundreds of villagers fled Miranshah on foot, carrying suitcases and bundles of clothes. Vehicles were not allowed in or out of the town, so people had to walk 15 km to a security checkpoint to find transport.
Noor Nawaz, 25, who runs a shop selling auto parts, said he and his family spent a sleepless night because of the fighting. Mortar and artillery fire thundered overnight, and helicopters could be heard flying until dawn.
“People are extremely scared. Nobody has slept. Children were crying,” he said as he fled the town with his wife and three children. His veiled wife was carrying their three-year-old son. The government put the militant death toll at 46, but Interior Ministry sources said over 100 terrorists were killed. The exact casualty figures could not be confirmed as communication with the region was badly affected with the destruction of the Miranshah telephone exchange. However, army telephone lines were still operating, the sources said.
Intercepts of radio communications between militants in Miranshah and nearby Mir Ali suggested close to 100 fighters had died, security and intelligence officials said.
A man who claimed to speak for the militants called The Associated Press by satellite phone from an undisclosed location and said that fighters killed 55 soldiers and captured 14 others. The purported spokesman, Maulvi Abdul Ghafoor, warned that fighting would spread to other areas of the region if troops did not withdraw.
— Additional input from agencies
