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24 Killed as Pakistan Goes After Militants Pakistan Goes After Militants in Northwest
(about 7 hours later)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani jets and artillery fired on suspected militant strongholds across North Waziristan in the early hours of Tuesday, local residents and officials said. At least 24 people were reported killed and dozens more injured. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani jets pounded suspected militant hide-outs in North Waziristan on Monday night for the first time in years, signaling that the government was prepared to take the fight to the center of the insurgency that has racked Pakistan. There were at least 40 casualties in the airstrikes.
The action by the Pakistani military was conducted on a larger scale than usual for the volatile tribal region in northwest Pakistan. It appeared to come in response to two brazen Taliban attacks that killed at least 30 members of the security forces. The strikes appeared to be in retaliation for recent terrorist bombings in Bannu and in Rawalpindi, the site of the Pakistani military’s general headquarters. The two bombings killed at least 30 members of the security forces and put added pressure on the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to take a firmer stand against the militants, who have used the rugged tribal regions of the country’s northwest for years as a haven and base.
According to local residents of Mir Ali, the second-largest town in North Waziristan, jets and artillery pounded the nearby villages of Esori, Haider Khel, Hurmaz and Boya, killing at least 16 people. The area is the home to the antigovernment Taliban faction Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Militant violence continued on Tuesday. Two buses full of Shiite pilgrims returning from Iran were attacked in Baluchistan Province in the southwest, leaving 18 people dead. Gunmen also attacked health workers administering polio vaccinations in various parts of the country; three workers were killed in Karachi in the south, including two women.
The United States has been urging Pakistan for years to do more to root out militants in the area, particularly those from the Haqqani network and Al Qaeda. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has also faced growing public pressure to get tough on the militants, who have wreaked havoc in the country through a string of recent suicide bombings. Pakistan’s efforts to eradicate polio have repeatedly been hampered by militants, who say the vaccination program is a cover for spying. This month, the World Health Organization said that Peshawar, a city in the northwest, was the world’s largest reservoir of polio infection.
Panic gripped the area during the shelling, as residents fled the villages seeking safety. Against this backdrop, there are growing calls within the country for Mr. Sharif to develop a coherent antiterror strategy. His government has shown an inclination toward peace talks with militants who are willing to lay down arms, and critics have accused it of vacillating on how to deal with those who do not.
“We were sleeping, and they attacked us in the night,” Muqeem Khan Dawar, a local schoolteacher from Mir Ali, said by telephone. “And all those killed in the shelling were civilians. We know very well who is a Taliban and who is a civilian.” American officials have long pressed the Pakistani military to take action against both local and foreign militants holed up in North Waziristan. Until now, however, officials here had usually balked, saying an attack would lead to more urban violence and to reprisal attacks against a military that is already spread thin in the restive tribal regions.
Local officials dismissed the claims of civilian casualties and insisted that security forces were going after militant hide-outs only. Military and intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the government had conducted the airstrikes in North Waziristan “after receiving actionable intelligence,” and denied that they were a preamble to a large-scale military operation in the region.
“The security forces targeted militant hide-outs in the area,” a local government official said by telephone from Miram Shah, the capital of North Waziristan. “There are reports that senior TTP commanders have been killed in the operation, but I cannot confirm their identity yet. We attacked those places where terrorist masterminds are based.” “Militant hide-outs were bombed in Mir Ali and Miram Shah after we got reports” of the presence of senior militants, a security official said.
An intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, “All those killed in overnight operations are Mehsud and Uzbek fighters,” referring to Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban who was killed last year. “The militants were involved in bombings on a church in Peshawar and the latest attack in Bannu,” the official continued.
Artillery shelling was also carried out in Miram Shah, where local residents said at least eight people had been killed. Security officials said the people killed in the airstrikes were militants, but residents of Mir Ali and Miram Shah said that most of the casualties were civilians. Eight wounded women and children were taken to a hospital in Miram Shah, and several others to a hospital in Mir Ali, residents said, after jets and helicopter gunships struck positions within the town and in hilltop areas of nine other villages in the region.
“Dozens have been wounded,” said Muhammad Din Wazir, an official in Miram Shah who said the death count there could go higher. “And we cannot shift them to hospitals due to curfew.” Many families fled to the adjacent districts of Dera Ismail Khan and Lakki Marwat. Dozens of vehicles loaded with people could be seen moving out of the area of Mir Ali and Miram Shah, according to local officials.
North Waziristan is considered a main sanctuary for several militant factions, who use the region as a base to launch attacks inside both Afghanistan and Pakistan. “My family, which is consisted of 35 persons, is on its way to Peshawar to escape military bombardment,” Ahmad Jan Dawar, a resident of the village of Hassu Khel, near Mir Ali, said angrily by telephone. “Our village has now become a no-go area for us. Now, I am running like a mad dog to make arrangements for them.”