60 Militants Killed In Anti-Taliban Offensive: Pakistan Army

PESHAWAR: Pakistani forces exchanged heavy fire with the Taliban on Sunday defending its heart, a day after launching an offensive aimed at
bringing the action to state lands in the lawless Afghan border.

The army said 60 militants and five soldiers were killed in the first 24 hours of an expected offensive in the global Islamic Center of South Waziristan. The soldiers were securing the area, while some militants were fleeing, said.

There was no independent verification of militant casualties.

The crackdown follows a series of audacious attacks by militants in different parts of the country, including an assault on the army barracks, which killed over 150 people.

About 28,000 soldiers are fighting an estimated 10,000 hard core of the Taliban, including about 1,000 fighters and some Arab hard Uzbek al-Qaida.

The militants have had years to prepare his defense in the land of arid mountains and sparse forest cutting dry creeks and streams.

The army says it has surrounded the militants in their major area, a piece of territory in northern South Waziristan, and soldiers backed by aircraft and artillery attack from the north, southwest and southeast.

Government forces pushed down from the north faced with militants in the Nawaz Kot city, intelligence officials and residents.

“There was an intense firefight until midnight and morning saw tanks on the move and the Taliban were firing rocket-propelled grenades,” the villager said Gul Nawaz, who lives near Nawaz Kot.

The military has launched offensives in South Waziristan shortly before the first in 2004, when he suffered many casualties before striking a peace deal.

Security officials said soldiers advancing from the southwest are met fierce resistance when they tried to push into the Taliban in power in the city early Sunday Khaisora.

Soldiers move from the southern captured a Taliban stronghold in Spinkai Raghzai on Saturday after the militants took refuge in nearby mountains, authorities said. But a Taliban spokesman said the army was being rejected and vowed attacks on the president’s supporters, Barack Obama.

“They’re trying to get into our land everywhere, but we rejected his assault and suffered heavy losses,” the spokesman said by telephone Azam Tariq.

One of the Taliban were killed and three wounded, he said. Sovereignty “The government has put the country at stake for Obama … we’re going to attack his supporters everywhere.”

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