|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Monday, 20 September 2004 |
 |
|
 |
World | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
Noose tightened around militants: Pakistan army WANA, Pakistan, Sunday (Reuters) The Pakistani army said it had tightened the noose around hundreds of al Qaeda-linked foreign militants hiding in a rugged mountainous region near the Afghan border. "Around 600 to 700 foreign militants are still in the tribal area," said Major General Niaz Khattak, the operational commander in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan, 400 km (250 miles) southwest of Islamabad. "But the operational places of militants have been reduced to a considerable degree," he told journalists. The militants have been locked in a standoff with Pakistani security forces since March. A week ago Pakistani fighter jets and helicopter gunships pounded a militants' training camp, killing at least 50 - most of them foreigners. Pakistan says hundreds of foreign militants, most of them Uzbeks, Chechens and Arabs, are hiding in South Waziristan close to the border with Afghanistan. The militants enjoy a committed following among local tribesmen, who are supporting them despite a major crackdown by security forces. U.S. military officials believe al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, may be hiding somewhere along the rugged Afghan-Pakistan frontier. Military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said the military had no information on the presence of the two men in the Pakistani region. "We are not sure and we don't have any confirmed intelligence (about the) presence of any high-ranking al Qaeda official here." Khattak said most of the militants hiding in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan were from Central Asia, including Uzbekistan and Chechnya. He said a senior Uzbek al Qaeda leader, Tahir Yuldashev, might to be hiding in the region. Yuldashev, who is accused of a series of bomb blasts in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, in 1999, escaped an army operation in South Waziristan in March in which more than 100 people were killed. The military also put on display a large number of maps, computers, documents and books on military training which officials said were seized during a raid on a cellar at the home of a local ally of the al Qaeda militants in Shakai, 35 km (21 miles) of Wana about two weeks ago. The documents included the passport of Abdallah Khalid Mohammad Al-Haj, a Jordanian national. The private Geo television station said he might have links with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a suspected al Qaeda ally in Iraq. But the military officials said the matter had yet to be investigated. "We are investigating who this man is and whether he had any links with al Qaeda," a military official said. " Pakistan says it has killed more than 150 militants, most of them foreigners, in the last year, and arrested many more. Meanwhile two tribal chiefs who supported Afghanistan's upcoming presidential polls have been found dead after being kidnapped by Taliban rebels, an official said. The two had been captured along with five others at least a week earlier, said provincial security chief Mohammed Salim Ehsas. "Two old tribal leaders who were campaigning for the election were killed after they were taken by the Taliban," he said. "Five other people were abducted, all of them are from Maruf district. We don't know if they are dead of alive." The hardline Islamist Taliban, who enjoy strong support in this southern city despite their ousting by US-led forces in 2001, have vowed to disrupt Afghanistan's first presidential elections on October 9. The security chief said an Afghan soldier had been killed in the same district by presumed Taliban guerrillas. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
