| Ander Nieuws week 6 / Midden-Oosten 2011 |
Agence France Presse
February 3, 2011
About 22,000 Pakistani civilians have fled a fresh military push against Taliban fighters in the lawless tribal area on the Afghan border, officials said Thursday.
The offensive is concentrated in Mohmand district, part of the semi-autonomous region that Washington considers a global nexus of Al-Qaeda and Taliban who plot attacks in the West and destabilise Afghanistan.
"Over the last few days about 22,000 people have been registered in the two camps that UNHCR has helped to set up," UN Refugee Agency spokeswoman Ariane Rummery told AFP.
Amjad Ali, the top administrative official in Ghalanai, the main town of Mohmand, confirmed the number.
"We are providing them with food, non-food items and tents," he told AFP.
Ali said the ground and air offensive is targeting local Taliban and other fighters who have fled operations elsewhere in the semi-autonomous tribal belt, including the premier fortress of Waziristan.
"We have sealed the border with Afghanistan and also sent in troop reinforcements," he said.
An official in Pakistan's Frontier Corps paramilitary said more than 70 militants had been killed over five days of fighting and confirmed that thousands of people have been displaced.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister in northwestern province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, attributed a recent spike in bomb attacks on civilians to the fresh operation.
"Whenever action is taken in the tribal areas, militants react here in the settled areas. Fresh bomb blasts are reaction of the Mohmand operation," he told AFP in the provincial capital Peshawar.
Pakistan suffers near-daily attacks blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants that have killed more than 4,000 people since government troops evicted Islamists from an Islamabad mosque in a deadly July 2007 siege.
The military has claimed victory in a number of battles against militants, perhaps most notably in 2009 in the Taliban's former headquarters of South Waziristan, but militant attacks have continued.
Washington has said that eliminating militant sanctuaries in the tribal belt, particularly North Waziristan, is vital to winning the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and defeating Al-Qaeda.
© 2011 Agence France Presse.
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