Pakistani troops take town, kill over 50 Taliban fighters

April 29, 2009

BUNER, Pakistan (Reuters) –

Pakistani troops took the main town in strategically important Buner Valley on Wednesday after dropping by helicopter behind Taliban lines, killing more than 50 alleged Taliban fighters in two days, the military said.

A U.S. drone meanwhile fired a missile into another region, killing six alleged Taliban fighters in the latest such attack by U.S. forces in Pakistan's border areas with Afghanistan.

The Taliban's advance earlier this month into Buner, just 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital had sent shivers through Pakistan and heightened fears in the United States that the nuclear-armed Muslim state was becoming more unstable.

"We assure the nation that armed forces have the capability to ward off any kind of threat," military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas told a news conference in Rawalpindi, the garrison town close to the capital, Islamabad.

Pakistan had used jet fighters at the start of the operation on Tuesday then deployed helicopter gunships which inflicted more than 50 casualties, Abbas said. One soldier was killed.

The Islamabd government's demonstration of military resolve will probably reassure U.S. President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai when they meet Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in Washington on May 6-7 to discuss strategy.

Obama, speaking in Missouri, said Al Qaeda and the Taliban were the "single most direct threat" to U.S. national security.

"In Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan we do have real problems with the Taliban and al Qaeda," Obama said at a town hall meeting.

The strike by the pilotless U.S. drone which killed six targeted a vehicle. Two of the alleged Taliban fighters were foreigners, an intelligence official told Reuters from the region.

Taliban fighters had held the entrances to the valley, but they risked being caught between security forces at their front and rear after the successful airdrop.

"The airborne forces have linked up to police and Frontier Constabulary in Daggar," the military spokesman said earlier. "A link up with ground forces is in progress."

Residents saw troops descend from helicopters outside Daggar, the main town in Buner.

The military spokesman said the soldiers had freed 18 of some 70 police and militiamen abducted by militants on Tuesday.

Three members of an al Jazeera television crew were wounded when they came under fire while reporting from Buner, the network's website said.

The military estimated some 500 alleged Taliban fighters were in the Buner valley of the North West Frontier Province, about 140 km (80 miles) southeast of the Afghan border, and that it might take a week to clear them out.

U.S. ENCOURAGEMENT

The military has said a few hundred alleged Taliban fighters holed up in the mountains never represented a real threat to the capital.

But, Ikram Seghal, a retired army officer turned analyst, said the Taliban could have used Buner to advance on Tarbela, a dam regarded as critical for water and electricity supplies, before reaching Islamabad.

"It is very important psychologically, tactically and strategically to make sure that Buner is cleared of these Taliban," said Seghal.

A top U.S. general said Pakistani action against alleged Taliban fighters was key to stabilizing neighboring Afghanistan, where the United States is adding tens of thousands more troops this year in an effort to crack down on a resurgent Taliban.

"For any gains in Afghanistan, there must be corresponding advances across the border in Pakistan," said General James Conway, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps.

"We can and will eventually run up the victory pennant in Afghanistan. But without eliminating sanctuary across the border, the bad guys will simply come back, as they did in 2003 and 2004," he told reporters at the Pentagon.

Allies had feared Zardari's government was too ready to appease the Taliban Movement after he signed off on a regulation to introduce Islamic shari'a courts in the Malakand division of North West Frontier Province.

(Additional reporting by Junaid Khan, Augustine Anthony and Zeeshan Haider in Pakistan, and Andrew Gray in Washington; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Charles Dick)