Attacks resumed on al-Qaida strongholds
Pakistani attack helicopters and artillery resumed pounding hundreds of al Qaida suspects and tribesmen besieged in mud fortresses where al Qaida number two Ayman al-Zawahri is believed hiding in a Pakistani border region early today.
Up to 400 militants are believed holed up in the heavily fortified compounds in South Waziristan – a forbidding tribal region near the border with Afghanistan.
“The operation is on,” army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said today.
He reported no arrests of any senior al Qaida member.
A reporter in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan, said a helicopter gunship pounded Gangikhel village on the western outskirts of Wana this morning, an indication that the operation may be expanding.
The village had not been targeted since the new offensive was launched on Tuesday.
Fighting stopped yesterday but late into the night the troops began firing artillery guns, an intelligence official in Wana said.
Yesterday, General Sultan said the Pakistani forces were joined by “a dozen or so” US intelligence agents in the ongoing operation.
US satellites, Predator drones and other surveillance equipment hovered overhead.
Authorities hoped to wrap up the raid by tomorrow afternoon, interior minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat told The Associated Press. Dozens have been killed in the four-day operation.
Across the Afghan border a few miles away, US and Afghan forces tightened a net along the rugged frontier and reported arresting mid-level terrorist leaders in recent days.
Hundreds of civilians poured out of the battle zone in the tribal South Waziristan region, some wounded and others carrying their meagre possessions - clothes, carpets, pots and pans. Many said they knew nothing about the militants in their midst, and expressed outrage at the army assault.
An estimated 300 to 400 militants – a mix of foreigners and Pakistani tribesmen – were facing off against the military in several villages including Kaloosha, Azam Warsak and Shin Warsak, according to Gen Sultan.
He said authorities’ intelligence assessment was that a high-level fugitive was among the fighters but that he had not been seen and it was unclear whether it was al-Zawahri.
“The type of resistance, the type of preparation of their defensive positions, the hardened fortresses they have made means we can assume that there could probably be some high-value target there,” he said yesterday from the army press office in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital, Islamabad.
He backed off claims by four senior Pakistani officials that captured militants had revealed that al-Zawahri was among them, and possibly wounded.
“So far, whatever people we have apprehended, we have not got confirmation from them,” he said, but added that he could not share such intelligence anyway.
The semi-autonomous region, which has resisted outside control for centuries, has long been considered a likely hiding place for the top two al-Qaida leaders - but there was no indication Osama bin Laden was with al-Zawahri, a 52-year-old Egyptian surgeon.
Under pressure from Washington, Pakistan has sent 70,000 troops into the region since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This week’s operation is by far the bloodiest.
The raid began on Tuesday as a routine patrol and search for a couple of tribesmen accused of harbouring foreign militants, but authorities rushed in reinforcements after paramilitary forces “barged into a hardened terrorists’ den”, Gen Sultan said.
He accused the militants of using women and children as human shields in the mud buildings, preventing the troops from using artillery. But he acknowledged that the local “population is on the whole sympathetic” to the fighters.
In Karikot, a town a few miles from the heaviest fighting, elders convened an emergency jirga – or tribal council – and accused the army of breaking long-standing agreements for conduct in the region.
At the Rehman Medical Complex in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, two sisters – Haseena, 10 and Asmeena, 2 – received first aid after being struck by shrapnel. The girls’ 12-year-old brother, Din Mohammed, was killed when a shell landed near their house in the village of Kaga Panga.
“We were eating lunch and all of a sudden the shelling began and it hit our courtyard,” Haseena said, her face bandaged. “I loved my brother a lot. What did we do to deserve this?”
Other civilians who fled to Wana said they saw jet fighters and heard heavy gunfire through the night as fighting spread yesterday. Residents reported seeing scores of army trucks carrying troops and weapons from Wana to the target areas.
Villagers reported a lull in the fighting yesterday afternoon as tribal elders tried to mediate an end to the combat.
Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf said on Thursday that a “high value” target was believed trapped, and four senior Pakistani officials said that intelligence indicated it was al-Zawahri.
President George W Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told CNN on Friday that a “fierce battle was raging” but the US did not have any independent confirmation that al-Zawahri was surrounded.
US and Afghan troops captured “semi-senior” terrorist leaders as they tightened security along the frontier, according to a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
A Taliban spokesman, Abdul Samad, told AP by telephone that al-Zawahri and bin Laden were hiding in Afghanistan, far from the Pakistani assault.
“Muslims of the world – don’t worry about them, these two guests, they are fine,” he said.
Two militants were killed and eight were captured yesterday, Gen Sultan said. Among those captured were five foreigners along with a large cache of weapons. At least 43 people – 17 soldiers and 26 suspected militants – were killed earlier this week in fighting in the area.
