MIRANSHAH: Fighter jets pounded Taleban rebel suspects in Pakistan’s northwest tribal belt yesterday as the army vowed retaliation over the deaths of 16 soldiers in the worst such ambush in months.
The military said warplanes targeted alleged insurgent hideouts in South Waziristan, where the military says it is using air raids to lay the groundwork for a full-scale assault against Pakistani Taleban warlord Baitullah Mehsud.
Pakistan has offered a $615,000 reward for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of Mehsud.
Military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said 18 militants and 16 soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel, died over the last 24 hours in North Waziristan and the northwest district of Swat.
Death tolls released by Pakistan are impossible to confirm independently because fighting takes place in closed military zones, and the army has faced increasing skepticism that more than 1,600 militants have been killed. On Sunday, rebels armed with rocket launchers and machine guns ambushed a military convoy in North Waziristan, killing 12 soldiers, while another four died of their injuries yesterday, Abbas said.
“In the recent past, we haven’t suffered that kind of casualties. It’s a huge loss,” the spokesman told AFP.
“The attack was unprovoked and uncalled for, and we reserve the right to respond in an appropriate manner,” he told a news conference.
Pro-Taleban militants in North Waziristan said yesterday they were revoking a controversial peace accord signed with the government in February 2007.
A meeting by rebel regional commander Gul Bahadur decided not to allow troop movements in the area because of the deaths of “innocent people” in US drone attacks and Pakistani military operations, a spokesman told AFP.
“All guerrilla commanders have been alerted to ensure withdrawal of troops,” said Ahmedullah Ahmedi. Militants in North Waziristan announced a similar decision in July 2007 after the army besieged militants in a pro-Taleban mosque in Islamabad.
Separately, a stray projectile overnight killed three civilians as it slammed into worshippers leaving a mosque in the village of Kaloosha, about 15 km west of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan.
“First militants fired rockets at an army camp in Wana, after which troops responded with artillery fire,” said local government official Ghafoor Shah. “One of the shells hit people coming out of a mosque in Kaloosha village and killed three people and wounded another seven,” Shah told AFP.
Fighting in Pakistan’s tribal belt follows nearly two months of offensives to expunge the Taleban from three districts of North West Frontier Province.
“Swat operations will be wound up in the next few days followed by the gradual return and rehabilitation of IDPs (internally displaced persons),” Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told a news conference. But although commanders have claimed several successes, sporadic fighting has continued and there has been heavy damage, leaving it unclear how the estimated two million displaced can return.
In Buner, where Taleban militants advanced toward Islamabad in April, a bomb wounded eight people, three of them security officials, police said.
“The bomb, planted under a bridge, wounded eight people including three police officials,” police officer Abdul Rashid Khan told AFP.
