AFGHANISTAN: Pakistani forces met stiff resistance in an attack on tribal fighters sheltering Muslim militants near the Afghan border yesterday and eight troops and 24 fighters were killed, the government said.
Heavy exchanges of gunfire erupted at dawn when hundreds of paramilitary troops launched the attack. The tribesmen, helped by their militant allies, fought back and launched attacks on the government troops, an official and a witness said.
"The situation is very bad, really. The government suffered many losses. There were several attacks at different places," said a resident of the town of Wana, near the scene of the fighting, 360 km south-west of Islamabad.
The fighting in the South Waziristan tribal region died down as night fell, an official in the area said.
The fighting came a day before US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell was due to visit Pakistan. Speaking as he flew to India on Monday, Mr Powell urged Pakistan to step up its military activities near the Afghan border.
The Pakistani push coincided with an offensive by US forces in southern and eastern Afghanistan, across the border from the tribal areas, aimed at crushing Taliban and al-Qaeda rebels and catching their leaders, including Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden is also thought to be in hiding somewhere along the frontier, and the US military hopes to trap him and others in a "hammer and anvil" operation with Pakistani forces. Pakistan's interior minister, Mr Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat, said yesterday that bin Laden was not in Pakistan.
"The reason why I said he could not be in Pakistan is because we have these 70,000 paramilitary forces patrolling the border. We have virtually sealed the border," he said in a BBC interview. "We believe that, from the reports which we've had, there is every reason to believe that he could be [in Afghanistan\]," said Mr Hayat.
Pakistan's tribal lands have a long tradition of autonomy. Many of the area's fiercely independent and conservative Pashtun tribesmen support Afghanistan's ousted Taliban militia, many of whom are also Pashtun. - (Reuters)