Pak cabinet slams intelligence failure
Pakistan's cabinet yesterday lashed out at the country's intelligence agencies for "failing miserably" to find those responsible for a wave of violence including the Marriott Hotel bomb attack.
The rare rebuke came after a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on the security situation in the country.
"The cabinet desired that stern action by the law-enforcing agencies must be taken as their intelligence agencies are failing miserably to lay hands on the perpetrators of abnormality in the country," the cabinet said in a statement.
Gilani expressed his "dissatisfaction" over the general law-and-order situation and reaffirmed the government's commitment to fight terrorism, urging the creation of a more comprehensive anti-terror strategy, it said.
"Today's cabinet (meeting) is haunted by the legacy of the Marriott Hotel suicide bombing," Gilani said, referring to Saturday's attack, which killed at least 60 people and injured about 260 others.
Gilani pledged to protect the country's citizens, saying militants “did not have any ground to stand on."
"The law of the jungle cannot be allowed to persist as we are deeply concerned about the life and property of the people of Pakistan," he said.
Meanwhile, quoting Pakistani army, another AFP report said seven Pakistani soldiers and 25 Taliban militants were killed yesterday in fierce clashes in a Pakistani tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
The fighting erupted in the Bajaur district, where the Pakistani military launched a major operation last month that has left 800 people dead and 300,000 civilians displaced.
"There was a fierce clash between security forces and miscreants in Bajaur in which 25 miscreants were killed and seven soldiers embraced martyrdom," chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP.
A senior military official said separately: "Both sides exchanged heavy rocket and mortar fire.
"Close air support was also called in to attack militant positions."
Earlier, Pakistani warplanes pounded a militant tunnel network in a tribal region bordering Afghanistan, killing 20 Taliban insurgents, local security officials said.
The air strikes happened in the troubled district of Bajaur, where a major army operation launched in August has killed more than 800 people -- most of them militants -- and displaced 300,000 civilians.
"At least 13 people were killed in repeated raids overnight in Rashakai, Khazana and Takhata towns where the militants had underground tunnels," a local security official said on condition of anonymity.
Local officials said attacks resumed yesterday in two other towns in Bajaur, killing another seven militants.
Pakistani Taliban militants, meanwhile, publicly executed three tribesmen accused of a series of murders in a troubled tribal area near the Afghan border, officials said.
A masked man blindfolded the tribesmen, all brothers, and tied their hands behind their backs before shooting them with a rifle yesterday morning in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan.
Around 50 local tribesmen watched the executions in the main Wana bazaar, a local administration official said.
He said that Taliban arrested the three men a few days ago after they killed five people in Wana. "They were tried by Taliban and found guilty of committing the murders," he added.
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