Pakistani army claims advances
It gained ground, taking the hometown of the Pakistani Taliban's chief on its way to a key base.
ISLAMABAD - The Pakistani army claimed more advances in its eight-day-old offensive in a Taliban stronghold along the Afghan border yesterday, while the militants' chief warned of more attacks around the country unless the military halted the assault.
The army moved into South Waziristan, vowing to crush a militant network that it says is behind 80 percent of the suicide bombings that have rocked the country over the last three years.
Washington has encouraged the operation because militants there are believed to shelter al-Qaeda leaders and attack Western troops in Afghanistan.
The military announced Saturday its first major achievement, the capture of Kotkai, hometown of Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud and one of his top deputies, Qari Hussain.
The town lies on the way to the militant base of Sararogha, and an army statement yesterday said troops had captured two key fronts between Kotkai and the base. The statement said troops secured at least one other important front and fought 16 hours to capture a significant mountaintop.
The militants have fled Kotkai and are sporadically attacking troops with rockets from high ground, the military said.
The most recent fighting in the region killed 15 militants and one soldier, the statement said.
Independent verification of such reports is nearly impossible because the military has blocked access to South Waziristan.
Most houses in Kotkai had been converted into bunkers and the town had hosted a training camp for suicide bombers, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said.
Over the last three weeks, the Taliban have carried out a string of bombings and commando-style raids across the country in response to the air and ground offensive. About 200 people have been killed in the onslaught.
"We have not suffered any significant losses in Waziristan," Taliban chief Mehsud said in a telephone call to an Associated Press reporter from an undisclosed location.
Mehsud threatened to turn Pakistan into "another Afghanistan or Iraq" unless the assault is stopped.
Abbas declined to comment on Mehsud's remarks.
In the latest attack, a suicide bomber blew up a car packed with explosives yesterday on the highway near Jhelum city, about 60 miles south of Islamabad, police official Waseem Kausar said.
He said the car was stopped by police, then one man fled and was caught while the other detonated the bomb, killing a patrol officer. The man in custody told police they had planned to detonate the bomb in Lahore, Kausar said, without giving details of a specific target.
The United Nations says an estimated 155,000 civilians have fled South Waziristan.
The Pakistani army said it had sent 30,000 troops to the tribal region to take on an estimated 12,000 militants, including up to 1,500 foreign fighters, among them Uzbeks and Arabs.
In other violence yesterday, gunmen assassinated a minister for education in Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, police official Shahid Nizam said. A nationalist group, the Baluchistan United Liberation Front, claimed responsibility in calls to local media.
The region has been the scene of a low-level insurgency for years to press demands for a greater share of oil and gas revenue in the province.