Until elimination of militants:

Pakistan in ‘full-fledged’ assault on Taliban

PAKISTAN: Pakistani security forces have launched a “full-fledged” assault on the Taliban’s top chief in the country and his rebels in the lawless tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, an official said Sunday.

The announcement of operations in the semi-autonomous northwest zone comes shortly after a bomb killed eight people near the area, the latest in a series of blasts the government has blamed on most-wanted militant Baitullah Mehsud.

Security forces are already locked in a seven-week campaign against the insurgents in three other northwest districts, and a recent wave of deadly attacks are widely seen as Taliban retribution for the fierce offensive.

“The government has launched a full-fledged operation in the tribal areas including Waziristan,” Owais Ahmad Ghani, governor of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), told a press conference in Islamabad.

“Operations will continue until the elimination of the militants.” Pakistan’s military had already said it had bombed militant hideouts in South Waziristan, but Ghani’s announcement is the first official confirmation of the opening up of a second front.

In its daily briefing Sunday, the military confirmed that 30 suspected militants were killed in strikes in South Waziristan a day earlier. The rugged tribal region is a stronghold of Mehsud, head of umbrella Taliban group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and Washington alleges that Al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists are in Waziristan plotting attacks on Western targets.

“We have ordered all the law enforcing agencies to start a full-fledged operation against Baitullah Mehsud and his followers,” said Ghani. “These are the people who are responsible for all of the bombing, terrorism, (and) killing of innocent people.”

A spokesman for Mehsud has claimed that TTP were behind a string of deadly attacks on civilians in Pakistan in recent weeks.

Islamabad, Monday, AFP