ISLAMABAD: President Asif Zardari yesterday called Taleban enemy of innocent civilians and said that Pakistan was battling for its “sovereignty” a day after scores of people were killed amid an escalating offensive against the Taleban.
Zardari said Pakistan would fight “until the end,” as US defense officials in Washington confirmed that Islamabad was stepping up its offensive against militants in the country’s troubled northwest.
“We are fighting a war for our sovereignty,” Zardari said in a television address. “We will continue this war until the end, and we will win it at any cost.
“The Taleban are the enemies of innocent people. They want to terrorize the people and to take control of the country’s institutions.” Zardari’s pledge came after suicide bombings targeting Friday prayers at two mosques killed at least six people, including a prominent Muslim cleric, and wounded more than 100.
The bombings confirmed fears that Taleban militants would avenge an offensive against them in the northwest, where the military said on Friday 39 insurgents and 10 soldiers had been killed in fresh fighting.
Religious scholar Sarfraz Naeemi, who had spoken out against Taleban suicide bombings, was among two people killed in one of the mosque attacks, in the eastern city of Lahore, police said.
Lahore police chief Pervez Rathore said a suicide bomber had entered the room where Naeemi was sitting with others after Friday prayers, and blew himself up.
Naeemi had issued a fatwa (edict) against suicide bombings carried out by Taleban militants.
Shops, offices, banks and schools in Karachi and Lahore, Pakistan’s two largest cities, were closed yesterday in protest at Naeemi’s killing, thousands of people gathered in Lahore for the funeral of Naeemi, officials said. Mourners demanded death for each and every Taleban member and a public hanging for their leader, Baitullah Mehsud.
In the other mosque attack, four people died and at least 105 were wounded when an explosives-filled car rammed into a mosque in the northwestern garrison town of Nowshera, police said.
Meanwhile, security officials said that jets pounded militant hideouts in the Mohmand tribal district bordering Afghanistan, killing at least seven rebels. Jets also pounded the northwestern tribal districts of South and North Waziristan, they said. Separately, a roadside bomb targeting a police vehicle in the northwestern town of Kohat yesterday wounded at least six policemen and two civilians, senior police official Dilawar Khan Bangash told AFP.
A spokesman for militant leader Mehsud’s Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for Friday’s two mosque attacks, as well as Tuesday’s bombing of Peshawar’s Pearl Continental Hotel that killed nine people.
“Anyone who will oppose us to please the Americans will face the same fate,” Maulvi Omar told said. In Washington, senior defense officials, speaking to reporters, said Islamabad planned to step up its offensive against Taleban in South Waziristan.
