Pakistani forces have captured a stronghold of al-Qaeda-backed militants near the Afghan border after days of clashes in which 60 militants were killed, the military said.
Pakistani security forces mounted a major offensive in the ethnic Pashtun Bajaur tribal region in 2008 and declared it largely cleared after months of clashes. But militants, joined by comrades infiltrating from Afghanistan, staged a comeback in the region in recent weeks. Fourteen people were killed in a suicide bombing at a security checkpoint in Bajaur late last month.
Backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships, Pakistani forces aided by members of a militia from the area launched a push to clear parts of Bajaur on January 27th.
The military says it is now in control of the strategic Damadola area, about 12km (7 miles) north of Bajaur’s main town of Khar.
Damadola, an important militant stronghold, was the first part of Pakistan to be attacked by pilotless US drones. In January 2006, CIA-operated drones fired missiles into a house in Damadola in the belief that al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahri, was there. At least 18 villagers were killed.
The US has intensified drone strikes in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt, known as a hub for international Islamist militants, since September 2008, killing hundreds of people, including many Pakistani and foreign militants.
The fighting in Bajaur follows bigger offensives over the past 10 months in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, and the Taliban stronghold in South Waziristan.
The US has praised Pakistani action against militants attacking the Pakistani state, but wants its ally to extend its fighting to Afghan Taliban based in lawless border enclaves who attack western troops in Afghanistan.
But the head of US Central Command, Gen David Petraeus, has played down the possibility of any new, large-scale Pakistani offensive against those insurgent groups in the immediate future.
Petraeus told Reuters last week that Pakistan’s military was stretched thin trying to consolidate gains from offensives in the past year against the Taliban.
The paramilitary Frontier Corps said a number of militant hideouts had been destroyed in the Bajaur fighting. “Terrorists were using this area as a base for their terrorist activities,” the paramilitary force said on Saturday, adding that 60 militants and seven soldiers were killed in the fighting.
There was no independent confirmation of the casualties.