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Pakistan launches air strikes on Taliban Pakistan launches air strikes on Taliban
(about 17 hours later)
Pakistani fighter jets have bombed Air strikes by Pakistani jets killed at least 15 alleged militants in the country’s restive tribal areas on Wednesday night, underlining a deadlock between government and Taliban peace negotiators who have both demanded cease fires from the other side.
suspected militant hideouts in a tribal area on the Afghan border, killing at least 15 people, security officials said, after The rare attacks on a town in North Waziristan - an area largely controlled by banned groups - came after the Pakistani Taliban announced on Sunday it had executed 23 soldiers from the Frontier Corps and the killing of a senior army officer on Tuesday.
attempts to engage the Taliban in peace talks collapsed. A military official added that a “huge cache of arms and ammunition” was also destroyed, although none of the army’s claims could be independent verified in a region largely off limits to journalists. In addition, more suspected militants were “targeted in their hideouts” in other parts of the semi-autonomous tribal areas.
“We received information about militant hideouts and based on our The army claimed the targets had been involved in a grenade attack on a cinema that killed 12 people. A government official said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had authorised the strike after “restraining the army for three days”. “It was the only option to teach the Taliban a lesson,” he said.
intelligence precision strikes were carried out around midnight in the Many analysts doubt the government is prepared to authorise anything more than retaliatory airstrikes when the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan oversteps the mark. A major military effort to bring North Waziristan under state control – a long standing US demand – is strongly opposed by right wing parties and could trigger a bloody backlash in Punjab, the governing party’s political heartland.
Mir Ali area,” an intelligence official told Reuters. “This is really an effort by the government to tell [the Pakistani Taliban] if you are really serious about talking you cannot go on attacking targets,” said commentator Ejaz Haider. “They are sending a signal that just because we offered talks does not mean we are going to take it lying down when you kill 23 of our soldiers.”
“Fifteen militants were killed in the bombing. Thirteen of them were foreign fighters.” For the last three weeks intermediaries for both the government and the Pakistani Taliban have been engaged in a preliminary dialogue they hope will lead to peace talks. However the discussions have stalled with both sides accusing each other of bad faith over ongoing attacks.
Another security official said a cache of arms was destroyed in the strikes. On Wednesday, the Taliban spokesman said the execution of the 23 soldiers was an act of retaliation against ongoing operations by security forces since talks began, which he claimed had killed 60 fighters.
Nawaz Sharif became prime minister last year with a promise to find a negotiated peace with the Taliban. But as talks broke down this week the air strikes may herald a Military officials hit back with their own tally of deaths caused by the Taliban. They said 460 people had been killed and 1,264 wounded since all political parties agreed in September to pursue peace talks.
broader military offensive in North Waziristan, a region where many insurgents are based. Wajahat Khan, a national security correspondent at Geo News, said the government and the army appeared to have struck an accommodation for the time being. “We are not yet looking at a complete breakdown of talks, but the military is showing its teeth and the government is brushing them,” he said.
The army publicly supports Sharif’s call for talks but in private
senior officers have expressed frustration, giving rise to talk that the
military was waiting for an excuse to mount an armed operation.
The excuse may have come this week when a Taliban wing operating in
the tribal Mohmand region said it had executed 23 soldiers in revenge
for the killing of its own fighters by army forces.
Thursday morning’s air strikes came a few hours after Pakistan’s
army said more than 100 soldiers had been killed by Taliban militants
in the last five months, a rare admission of mass casualties.
In an unusually tough statement Sharif’s spokesman said in
televised remarks late on Wednesday that the Pakistan army was capable
of crushing all enemies.
“The prime minister wants to resolve these issues without bloodshed
but if the Taliban continue killing people then we will be left with no
choice but to keep our citizens safe from terrorism through any means
possible,” Pervez Rashid said.