http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=122376&d=10&m=5&y=2009
Sunday 10 May 2009 (15 Jumada al-Ula 1430)
Pakistan military claims Taleban are on the run
Agencies
IN SEARCH OF SAFETY: Local residents flee from the military
operation against the Taleban in the Thana area of Malakand division on
Saturday. (AFP)
MINGORA, Pakistan: Pakistan's military said yesterday a full-scale
offensive in the northwest has militants scampering for safety after President
Asif Ali Zardari vowed to exterminate the Taleban.
In an interview with PBS television, Zardari said he had ordered an
unspecified number of troops moved from the country's eastern border with India
to the northwest to assist the operation against the militants. He said more
troops would be moved out if needed, but pointed out that Pakistan's command
posts and cantonments were all on the "southern border" with India.
Asked if Washington pressed him to do so, Zardari said: "No. It was the
demand-based proposition. When the demand goes up, we shift."
As warplanes pounded Taleban hide-outs in Swat Valley yesterday,
civilians cowered in hospital beds and trapped residents struggled to feed
their children. Warplanes and troops killed at least 55 militants yesterday in
what Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani called the fight for Pakistan's survival.
"They are on the run," the army said in a statement, but added that
Taleban fighters were "trying to block the exodus of innocent civilians by
preventing their departure through coercion, IEDs (improvised explosive
devices), roadblocks with trees and even (making them) hostages."
The federal Cabinet yesterday declared the militants "anti-state
elements" and said the military offensive in the Malakand administrative
division will continue until their complete elimination.
Gilanim, who briefed the media about the Cabinet decision, refused to
give a time frame for the completion of the operation, saying: "It is not a
normal war."
He said the government had pledged to keep civilian casualties to the
minimum. The offensive has prompted the flight of hundreds of thousands of
terrified residents, adding a humanitarian emergency to the nuclear-armed
nation's security, economic and political problems. Desperate refugees looted
UN supplies in one camp, taking blankets and cooking oil.
Witness accounts indicate that scores of civilians have been killed or
injured in the escalating clashes in the Swat, Buner and Lower Dir districts.
Doctors and medics have joined an increasing flow of refugees streaming out of
the area. Only three doctors remained yesterday at the hospital in Swat's main
town, Mingora - all of them working flat out. One of the patients, Omar Ali,
said a mortar shell had crashed through the roof of his home near Mingora on
Wednesday, killing his eight-year-old son. Ali, his wife and four more children
were injured. Neighbors pulled them from the rubble and brought them to
hospital.
To add to the confusion, a suspected US missile strike killed nine
people, mostly foreigners, in South Waziristan, another militant stronghold
near the Afghan border, Pakistani intelligence officials said. The identities
of the victims remained unclear.
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