PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Pakistan pounded Taliban hideouts for a third consecutive day Thursday and said troops killed 14 insurgents in 24 hours as the president urged the nation to unite behind the offensive.
Faced with grave US concerns that rebels threaten Pakistan’s very existence, fighter jets, attack helicopters and tanks this week opened three fronts after armed Taliban seized control of districts 100 kilometres from Islamabad.
The fighters captured Lower Dir and Buner districts despite a government deal to enforce sharia law in those areas in a bid to end a Taliban insurgency, which alarmed Pakistan’s allies in the White House and the West.
Operation Black Thunder was launched under intense pressure from the United States, which warned that the Taliban’s advance from its insurgency hub in the Swat Valley was posing a severe threat to Islamabad’s authority.
The military said Thursday 14 militants had been killed in the last 24 hours of operations and that insurgent positions had been wiped out under fierce resistance across eight kilometres (five miles) of mountain tops in Buner.
Pakistan said around 70 militants and 10 soldiers were killed in Lower Dir. On Wednesday, the military said special forces dropped by helicopter re-took Dagar, the main town in Buner, and killed up to 50 Taliban fighters.
Army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said the military was verifying an overall death toll and said much of the district of Buner remained in Taliban hands.
Abbas said the militants had taken over police stations in three villages and were holding 52 police officers and paramilitary soldiers hostage.
Residents in one village said Thursday that Taliban fighters were putting up stiff resistance and had blown up two unmanned police checkpoints.
President Asif Ali Zardari said the country was facing a “critical hour” in its fight against insurgents linked to Al-Qaeda.
“Time has come for the entire nation to give pause to their political differences and rise to the occasion and give full support to our security forces,” he said in a statement.
“This is the only way to demonstrate our will, to keep Pakistan as a moderate, modern and democratic state.”
Pakistani military chiefs met in the garrison town of Rawalpindi neighbouring Islamabad on Thursday and resolved to fully support the government in its battle against militancy in Lower Dir and Buner, the military said.
The military chiefs “resolved to extend maximum support to the government in stamping out any spillover of militancy in these areas with zero tolerance,” it said in a statement after a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee.
The meeting, which was also attended by army chief Ashfaq Kayani “expressed its satisfaction over the progress of operations in Lower Dir, Buner and adjoining areas,” the statement added.
In February, the government acknowledged it had largely ceded control of the scenic Swat Valley and agreed that Islamic law could be enforced in a deal to end a bloody two-year rebellion led by radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah.
But the Taliban failed to disarm and earlier this month up to 500 militants pushed into Lower Dir and Buner, terrorising the local population.
The Taliban suspended peace talks with the government Monday after the military launched its latest offensive, and the longevity of February’s deal was unclear.
Pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Mohammad, who helped negotiate the deal, Thursday emerged from days of hiding to address a gathering of about 1,000 people.
“Negotiations with the government will be started only when it stops the military operation,” Mohammad said in one village.
US President Barack Obama has expressed concern that Pakistan’s civilian government may be struggling to control the situation.
“I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan, not because I think that they’re immediately going to be overrun and the Taliban would take over in Pakistan,” Obama said.
“I’m more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile,” he said.
Since Obama took office the United States has ramped up missile strikes by unmanned planes targeting Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders in the northwest tribal region to the north of Swat, causing widespread anger in Pakistan.
In the latest attack, a suspected US missile strike on a vehicle in South Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan, killed at least six militants late Wednesday.
On Thursday the US government said in an annual report on terrorism that Al-Qaeda remained the “greatest terrorist threat” to the West and that it “has reconstituted some of its pre-9/11 operational capabilities” by using the Pakistan border areas.
