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Pakistan forces attack kill up to 30 militants

Posted on: Wednesday, 1 March 2006, 04:09 CST

By Haji Mujtaba

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani helicopter gunships and ground forces attacked a militant hideout near the Afghan border on Wednesday killing up to 30 people, according to a senior official in the North Waziristan tribal region.

Sayed Zaheerul Islam, the top government administrator in North Waziristan, said between 25 and 30 foreign fighters and tribal militants had been killed and more wounded.

"It was a camp of foreign miscreants," Islam said. "Bodies and wounded are being airlifted," he added.

A backlash against the army action was brewing in Miranshah, the region's main town, hours after the attack, witnesses said.

The military operation came just days before U.S. President George W. Bush is due to arrive in Pakistan on a trip that will also take him to India, but army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan denied there was any link.

A witness at Danda Saidgai, a village some 15 km (10 miles) north of Miranshah, said he saw helicopters attack houses where women and children lived.

Islam said the helicopter gunships struck first and ground troops then closed in on the camp in the mountains near the Afghan border.

An ammunition dump at the base was also hit and explosions could be heard in Miranshah.

A Reuters correspondent in Miranshah heard firing as hundreds of tribesmen, some armed with automatic weapons and rockets, headed out toward Danda Saidgai.

A message broadcast by loudspeaker from a madrasa, or Islamic school, had ordered shops and schools to close.

The firing around Danda Saidgai had died down and security forces were mopping up and taking care of casualties, Islam said.

The army had acted on intelligence received from the Afghan side of the border that a party of militants had returned to Pakistani territory from the Afghan province of Khost, according to the official.

COMPOUND TARGETED

Major General Sultan said the operation had targeted a compound where foreign militants were hiding. But he was unable to give casualty figures as search operations were on, or say whether there were any high value targets present.

"The security forces have struck and knocked out this compound early this morning," Sultan told Reuters Television in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, next door to Islamabad.

Nek Amal Khan, a tribal elder from the area, said he and two companions were driving to the town when a helicopter strafed their van.

He said they jumped out and lay on the ground to play dead, when they saw eight more helicopters fire on the house of a local Muslim cleric, Mullah Noor Peo Khan, and other nearby houses.

"Then all the troops disembarked from the helicopters and surrounded the village," the tribal elder said, after bringing his two wounded companions to a hospital in Miranshah.

U.S. and Afghan forces along the border are frequently harried by Taliban insurgents, Central Asian Islamist militants and al Qaeda remnants.

Pakistan comes under frequent pressure to act more forcibly, although it has deployed around 80,000 troops in border areas.

Bush's visit is seen by analysts as a gesture of support for President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in a war on terrorism as al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding in tribal lands or in the rugged North West Frontier Province.

Musharraf's domestic critics frequently rail against the conduct of the war on terrorism, as Pakistanis are being killed, the Pashtun tribes alienated and Pakistan's own territory sometimes violated by U.S. forces.

A U.S. airstrike in January in the Bajaur tribal agency killed 18 people, raising tribal hackles, although Musharraf said he believed some foreign militants were among those killed.

Source: REUTERS

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