BUNER – Pakistani troops took the main town in the strategically important Buner valley yesterday after dropping by helicopter behind Taliban lines, killing more than 50 militants in two days.
A US drone fired a missile into another region, the al-Qaeda sanctuary of South Waziristan, killing six militants, in the latest such attack by US forces in Pakistan’s border areas with Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s advance earlier this month into Buner, just 100km (60 miles) northwest of the capital, Islamabad, sent shivers through Pakistan and heightened fears in the US that the nuclear-armed Muslim state was becoming more unstable.
“We assure the nation that armed forces have the capability to ward off any kind of threat,” military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas told a news conference in Rawalpindi, a garrison town close to Islamabad.
Pakistan had used jet fighters at the start of the operation on Tuesday and then deployed helicopter gunships which inflicted more than 50 casualties, Maj Gen Abbas said. One soldier was killed.
The Islamabad government’s demonstration of military resolve is likely to reassure US president Barack Obama and Afghan president Hamid Karzai when they meet Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari in Washington on May 6th to 7th to discuss strategy.
Mr Obama, speaking in Missouri, said al-Qaeda and the Taliban were the “singlemost direct threat” to US national security. “In Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan, we do have real problems with the Taliban and al-Qaeda,” he said at a town-hall meeting.
The strike by the pilotless US drone which killed six targeted a vehicle. Two of the militants were foreigners, an intelligence official said.
Unlike South Waziristan, Buner is not on the Afghan border. But militants’ growing reach deep into Pakistan’s northwest has raised alarm bells across Pakistan and in the US. Pakistani stocks lost more than 2 per cent due to worries over mounting insecurity.
Taliban fighters had held the entrances to the valley, but they risked being caught between security forces at their front and rear after the successful air drop.
The military spokesman said the soldiers had freed 18 of about 70 police and militiamen abducted by militants on Tuesday. The military estimated 500 militants were in the Buner valley, and it might take a week to clear them out.
A senior US general said Pakistani action against militants was key to stabilising Afghanistan, where the US is adding tens of thousands more troops this year in an effort to crack down on a resurgent Taliban. – (Reuters)