Kuwait Times

Published Date: July 06, 2009

PESHAWAR: Pakistani air strikes killed 19 suspected militants yesterday, police and security officials said, in an ongoing bombardment aimed at shattering Taleban strongholds across the northwest. Army officials, meanwhile, said a close aide of Maulana Fazlullah-the Taleban commander in northwest Swat valley-was killed as a 10-week-long operation against militants in the scenic region rumbled on.

Military and government officials claim to have almost cleared Swat valley of insurgents and are now targeting the tribal region bordering Afghanistan, but fresh shelling erupted yesterday just north of Swat's main town Mingora. "Gunship helicopters shelled militant hideouts at Mangaltan area of Charbagh town. At least ten militants were killed in the shelling," Major Nasir Khan, a military spokesman in Mingora, told AFP by telephone.

Khan said the air attacks were called in after fresh reports of militant movement in the area. An intelligence official in Mingora confirmed the strikes and the death toll. Security forces have vowed to follow up the Swat campaign with an offensive against Taleban warlord Baitullah Mehsud and his network in the lawless tribal belt, where Washington alleges Al-Qaeda fighters are also hiding out.

At least six alleged rebels linked to the hardline Taleban were killed yesterday in the tribal North Waziristan region near the Afghan border. "Six or seven militants were killed and four were injured when jet fighters bombed Taleban hideouts in different parts of Datta Khel," Aziz Khan, a tribal police official, told AFP by telephone. The air strikes hit about 20 kilometres (10 miles) west of Miranshah, the main district town in the semi-autonomous mountain region.

Residents said they saw six dead bodies, but added that civilians were also hurt. "We were in our houses when war planes bombed the area," local resident Mahmood Gul told AFP from Miranshah's main hospital, where he had taken his young son for treatment for shrapnel wounds.

In the Orakzai region yesterday, gunship helicopters shelled militant positions in two areas. "At least three militants were killed and many injured in the shelling," a military official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. The bombardment hit close to the site of a military helicopter crash Friday which killed 26 security personnel.

The military have blamed a technical fault for the crash, but the Taleban claim to have shot down the MI-17 in retaliation for the start of military operations in Waziristan. Also yesterday, army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP that the military had killed a commander loyal to Fazlullah on the outskirts of Mingora. "Ehsan, alias Abu Jandal, was killed two days earlier in Qambar area. He was a mid-level commander," said Abbas. Security sources in the area confirmed the death and said Jandal wa
s a close aide of the firebrand cleric.

Fazlullah has a 600,000-dollar government bounty on his head, and although the interior minister has said he is injured and surrounded, the military have refused to confirm reports of his imminent death or capture. In other unrest, a nine-year-old girl was killed and ten other people wounded when a roadside bomb was remotely detonated in Upper Dir district, which neighbors Swat, said local police chief Mohammad Ijaz Khan.-AFP