Troops kill 20 Taliban in as talks suspended

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 9:32 PM Posted by Beijing News


Pakistani troops killed 20 rebels in a ground and air operation in the northwest Monday, the military said, after a shaky peace deal was thrown into doubt when the Taliban suspended talks.

The deaths take the toll since Sunday when the military launched its operation in Lower Dir district to around 50, officials said.

"Twenty militants were killed today by the Frontier Corps troops in Maidan area of Lower Dir," the military media wing said in a statement.

Paramilitary troops and helicopter gunships bombed suspected bases in Lower Dir for a second day running, a military official earlier said.

Helicopter gunships targeted different militant hideouts, the official told AFP, on condition of anonymity.

"Eight security officials were also killed in two days of operation," another military official said, requesting anonymity.

The Taliban earlier suspended talks with the government after Pakistan's military launched a fresh offensive against Taliban fighters in the northwest, under intense US pressure to stop the advance of the extremists in the region.

"Our council of leaders met on Sunday night and decided to suspend peace negotiations with the government in North West Frontier Province," said a spokesman for Soofi Mohammad, the cleric who negotiated a peace deal between the two sides in February.

"We, however, still adhere to the February deal," Ameer Izzat Khan told AFP, referring to the highly controversial accord that put three million people under sharia law.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan TTP, led by Baitullah Mehsud, a wanted tribal warlord called the operation "unwanted".

Demanding an immediate halt to the offensive, TTP spokesman Maulvi Omar told AFP "the operation can harm the peace deal."

"If the operation is not stopped Taliban from other places will be compelled to extend support to Taliban in Dir," Omar said in a phone call from an unknown location.

Despite the deal, Taliban militants on Monday took control of a telephone exchange in Behrain town, 30 kilometres 18 miles north of Swat valley, police officials said.

A remote-controlled bomb in the northwestern town of Lakki Marwat killed two people and wounded five police officials, police said.

The Taliban promised to lay down their arms in exchange for sharia courts in a deal billed as the end of a nearly two-year brutal insurgency that ripped apart the once-peaceful Swat area.

But the agreement was followed by further encroachments in the region, and the government has been in talks with the militants to try to restore peace there.

President Asif Ali Zardari, who recently ratified the sharia accord, told AFP Monday that troops had now ousted the Taliban from Lower Dir, 75 kilometres 46 miles west of Swat.

Across Pakistan, more than 1,800 people have been killed in a wave of Al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked extremist attacks since July 2007.



03 Contemporary Art by the Sea exhibition in Belgium. REUTERS/Thierry Roge

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