Third Bomb Hits Pakistan’s Lahore City
March 12, 2010
(AP) FoxNews.com

LAHORE, Pakistan — DEVELOPING: Pakistani news reports say another bomb has exploded in the eastern city of Lahore, hours after twin homicide bombings killed at least 43 people and wounded about 100.

The reports Friday said rescue workers have been dispatched to the scene and that casualties were feared.

It would be the third time this week that Lahore has been hit by a bomb attack.

March 12: Pakistani officials and soldiers visit the site of bombing in Lahore, Pakistan.

The attacks have shattered a period of relative calm in Pakistan, which has been battling Al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Two women among six staff members killed, seven injured

MANSEHRA: Six staff members, including two women, were killed and seven others sustained injuries when over a dozen armed men wearing masks attacked the office of a non-governmental organisation in Oghi on Wednesday.

Police said that over a dozen militants attacked the World Vision office with guns and grenades in Oghi town in Mansehra, killing six staff members and injuring seven others. All of the victims were of Pakistani origin, they said.

An official of the World Vision, Muhammad Sajid, who was present in his office at that time, told reporters the gunmen made the staff members hostage in a hall and then dragged them to an adjacent room and killed them one by one. The gunmen also snatched cash, cell phones and other valuables from the hostages.

Before fleeing the scene, the masked militants detonated an explosive device, damaging the rented building occupied by the charity. According to the bomb disposal unit, about 10 kilograms of explosives were used in the explosion creating a four feet deep crater at the bombing location.

Those killed in the incident were identified as engineer Muhammad Ayaz (Swat), advocacy officer Muhammad Jamshed (Mardan), engineer Muhammad Fahim (Abbottabad), Liaqat Khan (Mansehra), Kehkashan Bibi (Abbottabad) and Zaryab Bibi (Mansehra).

The injured identified as Qazi Hamid, Muhammad Abid, Muhammad Sohail, Munir Ahmad, Imtiaz, Khushboo Bibi and Zahida Bibi were rushed to field hospital in Oghi wherefrom three critically injured were taken to the Ayub Medical Complex in Abbottabad. Those with minor wounds were discharged after first aid.

It was the second attack of its kind in Mansehra. Earlier, in February 2008, four aid workers of British-based group Plan International were killed in a similar gun and grenade attack in Mansehra.

World Vision has been working in the area since October 8, 2005 earthquake, which had killed about 73,000 people and left at least 3.5 million homeless. Sources said a search operation was launched in the area after the attack but no arrest was made till filing of this report.

Eyewitnesses said that some 15-armed militants disappeared into a mountainous area after the attack. They added that the militants were armed with Kalashnikov rifles, pistols and hand-grenades.

[REad more...]

March 11th, 2010

MIRANSHAH: Three missiles fired by a US drone killed five Taliban on Monday in Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, security officials said.

“Five people have been killed and three wounded in the attack. It was an American drone attack,” an intelligence official said.

A security official in Peshawar confirmed the strike, saying the missiles hit militants gathered in a compound in the town, while residents said missiles struck two different buildings close to each other in the main bazaar.

[Read more...]

ISLAMABAD (AP) – A top Pakistani Taliban commander close to Al Qaeda is believed to have been killed in an army airstrike, officials said Saturday, in the latest apparent blow to insurgents who have attacked Pakistan and threatened U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

Maulvi Faqir Mohammed was believed to be among some two dozen insurgents killed Friday at a sprawling compound in the northwest Mohmand tribal region, two intelligence officials said.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said authorities had not identified the bodies of Mohammed or his fellow commander Qari Ziaur Rehman, but all the militants hiding at the site were killed after the helicopter gunships were dispatched on “real-time” intelligence.

“If Faqir Mohammed and Qari Ziaur Rehman are alive, then I will be surprised,” he told Pakistan’s Express news channel after receiving a briefing from the paramilitary Frontier Corps in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

The intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media on the record. They said they were confident of their information, but warned that the remote, dangerous nature of the region made it nearly impossible to offer a definitive confirmation at this stage. Pakistani Taliban spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

Mohammed was a deputy commander in the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, Pakistan’s Taliban Movement, leading the network’s operations in the Bajur and Mohmand tribal regions. He also was close to Al Qaeda No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri, who along with Osama bin Laden is suspected of using Pakistan’s tribal badlands as a hide-out.

The Pakistani Taliban have staged numerous attacks that have killed hundreds across Pakistan, and they are suspected to aid militants involved in attacks across the border in Afghanistan. The group is also a prime suspect in the suicide bombing that killed seven CIA employees in eastern Afghanistan in late December.

Bajur and to some extent Mohmand have come under fierce assault by Pakistani army and paramilitary forces. Just days ago, a top general declared for the second time in a year that Bajur was cleared of militants.

Last year, after then-Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud was reported killed in an August U.S. missile strike, Mohammed declared that he was taking over the group on a temporary basis. There were suggestions, however, that the move rankled others in the Pakistani Taliban, making Mohammed’s final status in the network somewhat murky after another militant, Hakimullah Mehsud, was selected as the heir to Baitullah.

If confirmed, Mohammed’s death would be the latest in a series of victories for Pakistan and the U.S. in the battle against Islamist extremists.

Over the past two months, Pakistan has captured several Afghan Taliban leaders hiding on its soil, intelligence officials have said. Among them is Mullah Baradar, the top deputy to Mullah Omar, the Afghan Taliban’s supreme chief.

Pakistan also has waged multiple army offensives throughout the tribal belt, though it has avoided pushing into North Waziristan, the stronghold of several militant groups that have focused on defeating U.S. troops in Afghanistan rather than taking on the Pakistani state. The U.S. has relied heavily on missile strikes to take out targets in the tribal areas, often aiming for Al Qaeda operatives, but also broadening its targets to include Pakistani Taliban leaders.

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ISLAMABAD: Pakistani security forces killed up to 30 Taliban fighters on Thursday in a counter-offensive after coming under attack in a volatile tribal area on the Afghan border, military officials said.

According to the FC sources, the extremists attacked Marjan-1 Check Post in Lakro tehsil of Mohmand Agency at 4am today, which was duly retaliated by the forces.

Militants killed one soldier and wounded four in an early morning attack on a military checkpost in Mohmand tribal region.

“During fighting, 25 to 30 terrorists were killed,” a military official told talking to a UK-based news agency.

There are at least ten bodies with the forces. The FC sources told that a group of ten extremists came from Bajaur; however, they were forced to flee as a result of forces’ action.

Another official said the bodies of five militants were in the custody of the security forces.

The clash erupted two days after Pakistan said it had cleared the Taliban and al Qaeda from nearby Bajaur region after nearly two years of fighting in the area.

Separately, the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary said it had killed 38 militants and arrested 18 in a week-long operation near the northwestern garrison town of Kohat.

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A top Pakistani general claimed recently that the Taliban have been driven from a region in the northwest that has served as an al Qaeda and Taliban haven for the past nine years.

The Taliban and al Qaeda have been defeated in the tribal agency Bajaur after a two-month-long offensive that began in January, according to Major General Tariq Khan, the commander of Pakistan’s Frontier Corps.

“The militant command and control centres and their caches have been dismantled or captured,” Khan told The Sunday Times.

“We have now cleared this area till the Afghan border, military operation is in its final stages and policing has been started,” Khan told Dawn.

Khan claimed that the Taliban in Bajaur have suffered significant casualties over the past two months, with 75 fighters killed and 76 detained, and another 364 fighters who surrendered. He also claimed that the Taliban have lost more than 2,200 fighters in combat in Bajaur since 2008, while the military have lost only 149 troops there.

The Taliban and al Qaeda were dug into a series of caves and ridges in the Damadola region in Bajaur, Khan told Dawn. He also declared that the Taliban leadership has been smashed in Bajaur and has fled.

“There were Egyptians, Uzbeks, Chechens and Afghans killed in the operation,” Khan said. “Al Qaeda was there. They had occupied the ridges. There were 156 caves designed as a defensive complex.”

“Now their leadership does not exist. Twenty-five per cent of them have gone to Afghanistan, 15 per cent have gone back to Swat and other native areas,” Khan stated.

Major General Khan’s claim that the Taliban have been crushed in Bajaur comes one year and one day after he previously claimed the Taliban were defeated there.

“They have lost,” Khan told reporters on March 1, 2009, after a brutal campaign that began in August 2008 was declared to have ended. “Their resistance has broken down. We think we have secured this agency. The Taliban have lost their cohesion.”

But the Taliban continued to exert control in Bajaur during 2009, killing tribal leaders who dared to work with the Pakistani government and military.

Taliban “no longer significant” in the tribal areas: Khan

Major General Khan also claimed in his recent interview that the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan has been defeated throughout the tribal areas after a series of operations that began in October 2009 in South Waziristan.

“The kind of hits the leadership has taken, the casualties they have taken, the TTP [the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan] is no longer significant,” he told The Sunday Times. “It has ended as a cohesive force. It doesn’t exist any more as an umbrella organization that can influence militancy anywhere.”

The Pakistani Taliban have suffered setbacks in Pakistan’s northwest over the past year, primarily in Swat, a settled district outside of the tribal areas, when the military launched a major operation in April 2009. The military also claimed to have successfully driven out the Taliban in the Mehsud tribal areas following the operation that began in October 2009.

But the Taliban maintain a significant presence in the tribal areas, including in the Wazir regions in the western areas of South Waziristan, and in North Waziristan, Arakzai, Khyber, Kurram, and Mohmand. The Taliban in the Mehsud tribal areas in the eastern region of South Waziristan conducted a tactical retreat and resettled in North Waziristan, Arakzai, Kurram, and Khyber.

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WASHINGTON: The Obama administration sent lawmakers this week a plan for $1.45 billion in aid for Pakistan this year, funding water, energy and other projects as well as a media campaign to counter extremist views.

The spending plan, obtained by Reuters, was sent to lawmakers late on Thursday as part of the US administration’s obligation to consult Congress over the civilian aid package.

The aid is aimed at expanding ties with Islamabad beyond military spending, which amounted to more than $10 billion over the past nine years.

“It represents a rebalancing of the military and civilian assistance”. Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew told Reuters of the package, part of a $7.5 billion, five-year aid plan passed by Congress last year.

Washington also wants to help Pakistan’s weak government meet budget shortfalls and deliver services to a population increasingly angry about economic and security troubles.

The 15-page spending plan said the Obama administration was working closely with Pakistan’s government to design “high-impact” projects in energy, agriculture, water and education and to improve services and economic opportunities for people in areas susceptible to extremism.

The “funding will help build the capacity of the government of Pakistan to provide basic services while extending its writ in poorer areas vulnerable to extremism,” said the report.

The biggest chunk of the money, about $ 1 billion, covers economic support, including funds to build up weak government capacity at both the local and national levels.

Infrastructure projects take up $55 million, with a focus on energy and helping to ease rolling blackouts that have crippled some industry and are a major public irritant. About $50 million was set aside for a “comprehensive communications strategy” to counter extremist views and strengthen Pakistani institutions and moderate voices, the report to Congress said.

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PESHAWAR: Security forces have killed 25 militants in Peshawar’s frontier region in the first four days of in ‘Operation Spring Cleaning’, according to officials.

Addressing a joint press conference in the Spina Thana near Darra Adamkhel on Saturday, city police chief Liaqat Ali Khan, Frontier Constabulary Commandant Safwat Ghayur, the Frontier Corps’ (FC) Brigadier Faiz and the army’s Col Qaiser said the operation was launched on the basis of intelligence reports that around 300 militants were setting up a “command-and-control system” in Pastowany area of Peshawar’s frontier region, intimidating the local population and using the area in a bid to mount an attack on Peshawar.

The officials said that operation was jointly launched on February 24, and would continue until the elimination of militants form the area. They said one a FC troop had been killed in fighting and five others injured.

The officials said while several militants had been taken into custody, they put up “tough resistance”. They said the arrested militants belonged to Darra, Peshawar, Bannu, Kohat, Dera Ismail Khan and Fateh Jang.

They said huge caches of arms and ammunition and eight suicide jackets had been seized during the operation and “militant headquarters and hideouts destroyed”. They said “training material” and “literature” had also been confiscated.

[Read more...]

Staff Report
Daily Times
March 1st, 2010

Kohat, Pakistan: The bodies of at least 17 extremists were found lying near a government high school in Darra Adamkhel area of Taur Chhapro in the vicinity of FR Kohat, Geo News reported Sunday.

According to security sources, the security forces search operation is in progress for several days now; these miscreants were killed in the clash.

The search operation was launched in view of increasing incidents of abduction for ransom.

The area is considered as the haven for the extremists.

[International News]

February 28th, 2010

Reuters News Service FoxNews.com
January 31, 2010

The head of the Taliban in Pakistan, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed in a U.S. drone attack, Pakistan state television reported Sunday.

Degenerate Islamic Taliban Terrorist Chief Was Sent To The Cornfield.

The report stated Mehsud had been injured in a drone attack in the Shaktoi area January 14 and died three days later. He reportedly was buried in the village of Mamuzai in the North Waziristan region.

The Pakistani army said Sunday that it was investigating the reports.

The militant leader’s death would be an important success for both Pakistan, which has been battling the Pakistani Taliban, and the U.S., which blames Mehsud for a recent deadly bombing against the CIA in Afghanistan.

The army’s announcement came shortly after Pakistani state television, citing unnamed “official sources,” reported that Mehsud died in Orakzai, an area in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region where he was reportedly being treated for his injuries.

“We have these reports coming to us,” army spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas told The Associated Press. “We are investigating whether it is true or wrong.”

A tribal elder told the AP that he attended Mehsud’s funeral in the Mamuzai area of Orakzai on Thursday. He said Mehsud was buried in Mamuzai graveyard after he died at his in-laws’ home. The elder spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the Taliban.

Pakistani intelligence officials have said that Mehsud was targeted in a U.S. drone strike in South Waziristan on Jan. 14, triggering rumors that he had been injured or killed. The strike targeted a meeting of militant commanders in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan.

Mehsud issued two audio tapes after the strike denying the rumors. But Pakistani intelligence officials told the AP on Sunday that they have confirmation that the Taliban chief’s legs and abdomen were wounded in the strike.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Pakistani Taliban officials were not immediately available for comment, but low-level fighters have dismissed rumors of Mehsud’s death in recent days as propaganda.

The drone strike that targeted Mehsud came about two weeks after a deadly suicide bombing he helped orchestrate killed seven CIA employees at a remote base across the border in Afghanistan. Mehsud appeared in a video issued after the bombing sitting beside the Jordanian man who carried out the attack.

The bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, said he carried out the attack in retribution for the death of former Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud — Hakimullah Mehsud’s predecessor — in a U.S. drone strike last August.

The U.S. refuses to talk about the covert CIA-run drone program in Pakistan but officials have said privately that the strikes have killed several senior Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders.

Pakistani officials publicly protest the strikes as violations of the country’s sovereignty, but U.S. officials say privately they support the program, especially when it targets militants like Mehsud who the government believes is a threat to the state.

Mehsud, who has the reputation as a particularly ruthless militant, took over leadership of the Pakistani Taliban soon after Baitullah Mehsud’s death.

The 28 year-old militant leader has focused most of his attacks against targets inside Pakistan, but his men have also been blamed for attacking U.S. and NATO supply convoys traveling through the country en route to Afghanistan.

Hakimullah Mehsud first appeared in public to journalists in November 2008, when he offered to take reporters in Orakzai on a ride in a U.S. Humvee taken from a supply truck headed to Afghanistan. He was the Pakistani Taliban’s regional commander in the Orakzai, Khyber and Mohmand tribal areas before taking over the organization.

He has taken responsibility for a wave of brazen strikes inside Pakistan, including the bombing of the Pearl Continental hotel in the northwestern city of Peshawar last June and the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore earlier that year.

The group stepped up its attacks after the Pakistani army invaded its stronghold of South Waziristan in mid-October. More than 600 people have been killed in attacks throughout the country since the ground offensive was launched.

Authorities have said Mehsud has been behind threats to foreign embassies in Islamabad, and there is a $120,000 bounty on his head.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Militants Stage Attack on NATO Trucks in Pakistan
January 28, 2010
FoxNews.com

Note to Mr. Drone: Please send these Islamic scum-bags, that are resposible for the attack on NATO troops, to the “cornfield”.

KARACHI, Pakistan — Police say suspected militants have staged a rare attack in southern Pakistan against trucks carrying supplies for NATO troops in neighboring Afghanistan, wounding three people.

Police official Mohammed Ali says the militants attacked the trucks with guns and grenades early Thursday as they traveled on a main highway on the outskirts of the southern city of Karachi.

Up to 75 percent of the supplies for Western forces in landlocked Afghanistan arrive at Karachi port and then head north.

Militants have carried out a wave of attacks against the supply trucks in northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border, but such attacks are rare in Karachi.

January 21, 2010
Pakistani Army: No New Offensive for 6-12 Months
(AP)

ISLAMABAD – The Pakistani army said Thursday during a visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that it can’t launch any new offensives against militants for six months to a year to give it time to stabilize existing gains.

The announcement likely comes as a disappointment to the U.S., which has pushed Pakistan to expand its military operations to target militants staging cross-border attacks against coalition troops in Afghanistan. Washington believes such action is critical to success in Afghanistan as it prepares to send an additional 30,000 troops to the country this year.

But the comments by army spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas clearly indicate Pakistan will not be pressured in the near-term to expand its fight beyond militants waging war against the Pakistani state. Whether it can be convinced in the long-term is still an open question.

“We are not talking years,” Abbas told reporters traveling with Gates. “Six months to a year” would be needed before Pakistan could stabilize existing gains and expand any operations, he said.

The Pakistani army launched a major ground offensive against the Pakistani Taliban’s main stronghold near the Afghan border in mid-October, triggering a wave of retaliatory violence across the country that has killed more than 600 people.

Gates said Thursday that he wouldn’t directly press Pakistan to expand its military campaign but would instead ask his hosts what their plans are. He also said his talks with Pakistan’s military and civilian leaders were intended to explain the U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan.

The defense secretary told reporters traveling with him to Islamabad from India that he would reassure Pakistan that the United States is “in this for the long haul.”

But President Barack Obama’s comments in December that the U.S. would begin to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan in mid-2011 have raised questions among many Pakistani officials about Washington’s commitment.

Analysts say such concerns only reinforce the Pakistani government’s reluctance to target the Afghan Taliban as requested by the U.S. Pakistan has deep historical ties with the group, and many analysts believe some officials within the government and the military see the militants as an important proxy once coalition troops leave Afghanistan.

Gates cautioned Pakistan against trying to distinguish between the different militant groups in an essay published Thursday in The News, an English-language Pakistani newspaper.

“It is important to remember that the Pakistani Taliban operates in collusion with both the Taliban in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, so it is impossible to separate these groups,” Gates wrote.

“Only by pressuring all of these groups on both sides of the border will Afghanistan and Pakistan be able to rid themselves of this scourge for good — to destroy those who promote the use of terror here and abroad,” Gates said.

On of the goals of his trip, he said, is “a broader strategic dialogue — on the link between Afghanistan’s stability and Pakistan’s; stability in the broader region; the threat of extremism in Asia; efforts to reduce illicit drugs and their damaging global impact; and the importance of maritime security and cooperation.”

Gates’ first meeting Thursday is with Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar. He also has separate meetings scheduled with Prime Minister Yousaf Reza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari.