Gunships, planes strike Pakistan Taliban in Swat

By Junaid Khan Junaid Khan

MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) –

Pakistani helicopter gunships and war planes hit Taliban positions in the Taliban Swat valley bastion on Saturday but a curfew prevented civilians from fleeing the fighting.

The struggle in the northwestern valley 130 km (80 miles) from Islamabad has become a test of Pakistan's resolve to fight a growing Taliban insurgency that has alarmed the United States and other Western countries.

The military said up to 55 Taliban fighters were killed in the day's clashes and four soldiers were wounded. The figures could not be independently confirmed.

Pakistan's army went on a full-scale offensive after the government ordered troops to flush out militants from the Islamist stronghold, a former tourism center.

Fighting had already picked up earlier in the week, triggering a civilian exodus from the battle zones in recent days but concerns are growing about the fate of those still trapped and unable to move because of a curfew.

"We are feeling so helpless, we want to go but can't as there is a curfew," said Sallahudin Khan by telephone from Mingora, Swat's main town.

"We tried to leave yesterday after authorities relaxed the curfew for a few hours, but couldn't as the main road leading out of Mingora was literally jammed with the flood of fleeing people," he said as gunship fire boomed in the background.

Helicopters and warplanes targeted militant hideouts in Mingora and other areas in Swat, military officials said. Militants fired rockets at an army base in Mingora.

Swat administrator, Khushal Khan, told Reuters the curfew would remain in force throughout the day.

The U.N. refugee agency has said a "massive displacement" is underway. Citing provincial government estimates, it said on Friday up to 200,000 people had left their homes over recent days with a further 300,000 on the move or about to move.

They join 555,000 people displaced from other areas because of fighting since August, the agency said.

Many of the displaced stay with relatives or friends or find shelter on their own, but aid agencies and officials fear if the situation is protracted they will join tens of thousands in camps, further straining resources.

Pakistan's private Express TV station reported looting at one camp on Saturday, showing scenes of scuffles over supplies, but said the situation had been brought under control.

Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told a news conference the government would seek international help for the displaced people.

He also said the military would do its best to avoid hurting civilians.

"This is not a normal war. This is a guerrilla war. But it is our resolve, it is the resolve of the army that there should be minimum collateral damage."

Pakistan's fight against Taliban fighters sheltering near the border with Afghanistan is seen as vital to efforts to defeat the insurgency in that country.

While Swat is not next to the border, analysts say it could also become a base for Afghanistan fighters as well as for efforts to destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan's government.

Up to 15,000 troops have been pitched against between 4,000 to 5,000 battle-hardened militants in the valley.

"In my area, there is no government, it's all Taliban," said Ibrahim Khan, a farmer in the militant stronghold of Matta town.

"They are in full control."

In an incident that could hurt government efforts to rally support for the offensive, suspected pilotless U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles on Saturday at targets in South Waziristan, a Taliban sanctuary on the Afghanistan border, intelligence officials said.

One official as well as a Taliban source said the missiles killed five Taliban fighters. Another intelligence official put the death toll at as high as 20.

Pakistanis have criticized such U.S. attacks because they kill civilians and are viewed as violating sovereignty. They have been a factor in past opposition to Islamabad cooperating with Washington in fighting militants.

(Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony. Alamgir Bitani and Zeeshan Haider; Writing by Jerry Norton; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Pakistan: Up to 55 Taliban fighters killed in northwest

AP – 

MINGORA, Pakistan –

Doctors rushed to treat wounded Pakistani civilians and desperate refugees looted U.N. supplies on Saturday, as thousands of troops backed by bomb-dropping warplanes sought to purge Taliban militants from a northwestern valley.

The army said it killed as many as 55 more Taliban fighters in clashes in the Swat Valley on Saturday. Four soldiers were wounded, a military statement said.

Further south, a suspected U.S. missile strike killed nine people, mostly foreigners, in another militant stronghold near the Afghan border, officials said. The identities of the victims not immediately unclear.

Pakistan's leaders, encouraged by the United States, launched a full-scale offensive in Swat this week to halt the spread of Taliban control in districts within 60 miles (100 kilometers) of the capital.

But the fighting has caused hundreds of thousands of terrified residents to flee, adding a humanitarian emergency to the nuclear-armed nation's security, economic and political problems.

Witness accounts indicated that scores of civilians have already been killed or injured in the escalating clashes in Swat and the neighboring Buner and Lower Dir districts.

On Saturday, medics at the hospital in Swat's main town, Mingora, were rushing to treat dozens of residents caught up in the fighting.

Riaz Khan, a 36-year-old school teacher, his wife and two daughters occupied four of the beds, the shrapnel wounds on their arms and legs covered by bandages.

Khan said his other two daughters were killed three days earlier when a mortar shell hit their home near Mingora.

"We buried our daughters on Thursday when the army relaxed the curfew," he told an Associated Press reporter. "We reached the hospital only with great difficulty."

Nisar Khan, one of only three doctors left at the hospital, said there were about 25 war-wounded among the 100 patients.

The unidentified bodies of three women and a man apparently killed in the fighting were also being kept there, even though the hospital had no morgue, he said.

There were scuffles Saturday between police and dwellers of one of the still-crude camps mushrooming around the city of Mardan, just south of the war zone.

Television image showed dozens of men making off with blankets and tins of cooking oil. A policeman thumped one looter with the butt of his rifle while a man wearing a T-shirt bearing a U.N. logo urged others to return their booty.

"When people are desperate, it's hardly surprising that things like this happen," said Ariane Rummery, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency.

The agency has registered some 150,000 people fleeing the latest fighting. Pakistani and U.N. officials say the total number displaced may reach half a million.

Pakistan's army is fighting to wrest Swat and neighboring districts from militants who dominate the adjoining tribal belt along the Afghan frontier, where U.S. officials say al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden is likely holed up.

Taliban militants seized much of the area under a peace deal, even after the government agreed to their main demand to impose Islamic law in the region.

U.S. officials likened the deal to a surrender. Pakistani leaders said the agreement's collapse had opened the eyes of ordinary citizens to the extremist threat.

In the latest fighting, helicopter gunships attacked militant hide-outs in Mingora and killed 15 enemy fighters, a military statement said.

An estimated 30 to 40 more died in clashes in more than a half-dozen other locations, the statement said. Four soldiers were wounded.

The army has accused militants of causing civilian casualties with indiscriminate mortar fire.

However, it has declined to discuss the toll on innocents, and the army's account of the fighting could not be verified independently.