Heavy fighting in Pak tribal belt kills 33
Pakistan's army pounded Taliban fighters in a northwest region close to a lawless tribal belt yesterday, killing at least 33 insurgents as a military offensive spread, officials said.
Troops are already locked in a more than six-week battle against Islamist extremists in three northwestern districts, and officials said operations were now also underway in Bannu district bordering semi-autonomous Waziristan.
"We launched an operation in Jani Khel area against the militants. We are using artillery and helicopter gunships to target the miscreant positions," a military official based in the area told AFP.
Security forces have since Wednesday morning been attacking militants in Sarabangla, Hindi Khel and Jani Khel areas of Bannu, officials said.
"According to reports gathered by us, at least 33 militants have been killed," local police station chief Deen Nawaz told AFP.
Another senior military official, who did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media, told AFP: "At least 40 militants have been killed during the past 24 hours."
In their daily briefing on operations, the military said only that they had "engaged suspected terrorist locations at Jani Khel with heavy fire", but gave no toll from the fighting.
The statement said that Jani Khel was a staging area for militants fanning out in nearby districts.
Twenty-three suspected militants were meanwhile killed in Dir and Swat districts, they said, where operations began in late April and early May.
Police in Bannu said battles began after talks broke down between tribal elders and the government, who demanded the elders hand over Taliban militants responsible for kidnapping more than 100 students at the start of June.
"Forces pounded the militant hideouts for the whole night and in the morning at Jani Khel tribal area," local police official Khalil Zaman told AFP.
"Authorities have imposed curfew in some areas," he added.
Also in Bannu on Wednesday, one person was killed and two wounded when insurgents fired a rocket at a house, Zaman told AFP.
Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal regions are wracked by violence and are a known bolthole for hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda rebels who fled across the border to escape the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.
The United States alleges that Islamist extremists are sheltering in the rugged mountain terrain plotting attacks on the West.
The current US-backed campaign in and around Swat was launched when Taliban fighters advanced to within 100 kilometres (60 miles) of Islamabad, flouting a deal to put three million people under sharia law in exchange for peace.
The military says it has killed more than 1,350 militants since the assault began on April 26, although the figures are impossible to verify.
A surge in deadly militant attacks across Pakistan in recent weeks has raised fears that the Taliban are extracting revenge for the offensive.
In the latest incident, 18 people were killed Tuesday in a suicide blast at a luxury hotel in the northwest capital of Peshawar.
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