Pakistani forces engage in street fighting in Taliban bastion

Nov 4, 2009, 11:36 GMT

   Islamabad - Pakistani soldiers were engaged Wednesday in street-to-street fighting in an important Taliban stronghold in the tribal district of South Waziristan, the military said.

   Thirty militants were killed and eight soldiers, including two officers, were injured in clashes since Tuesday from an ongoing operation that was launched October 17 to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in the region on the Afghan border, it said.

   The offensive, code-named Path to Deliverance, has triggered a series of retaliatory attacks by Islamist insurgents in Pakistan's urban centres. Around 300 people, many of them civilians, have died in these strikes.

   An army statement said Wednesday that security forces had entered the town of Ladha, which it described as an important stronghold of 'terrorists.'

   'Intense fighting is taking place in the streets,' it said, adding that 10 Taliban had so far been killed there.

   Ladha is located is the eastern part of South Waziristan, a remote and mountainous district that has turned into a major terrorist hub with hundreds of al-Qaeda operatives running training camps and planning terrorist attacks abroad.

   Pakistani forces had several major clashes in 2008 in Ladha with the Taliban, mainly fighters from the ethnic Pashtun tribe Mehsud. The paramilitary Frontier Corps retreated from the region in August that year after it was no longer able to guard its posts.

   In other fighting reported by the military Wednesday, 16 Taliban fighters died in clashes with troops in Saroragha, another important militant base that government forces seized Tuesday. Seven soldiers, including two officers, were injured as the forces consolidated their positions.

   Another four militants were killed in engagements in the village of China, where the troops neutralized a number of bombs, the military said.

   According to the military officials, about 400 Taliban militants and 37 soldiers have so far been killed in the South Waziristan offensive. The figures could not be independently verified because reporters have been barred from the conflict zone.

   The United States has hailed the offensive against the militants, who routinely launch cross-border attacks on international forces in Afghanistan.

   Separately, unknown gunmen ambushed a rickshaw and killed two schoolteachers and wounded two other passengers in the Bajaur tribal district, said the deputy civil administrator in the region, Mohammad Jamil.

   'The teachers were heading to their home when they came under attack,' Jamil said.

   The Taliban are opposed to education for girls and have blown up hundreds of schools in the tribal region and neighbouring North-West Frontier Province since 2007.