The operation in South Waziristan Agency continued on Friday with exchange of small to heavy arms fire, said Director-General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan on Friday.
The army and para-military soldiers have cordoned off about 50 kilometre area, he said adding about 300 to 400 foreign and local terrorists are present at about seven targets in the agency.
He said two abortive attempts were made by the terrorists to run away in vehicles on Friday. Two terrorists including one foreigner were killed, he said. Four terrorists, one of them foreigner, have been apprehended while nine returned to their hideouts in the area. He said the DNA test of killed terrorists would be taken to ascertain their identification.
About the type of battle going on, he said normally guerrillas avoid a pitched battle but in this case since they had been surrounded, they were using small arms, rockets and rocket propelled grenades. He said so far there was no close fighting. He said the distance between the terrorists and the security forces where small arms were being used was about half a kilometre and where heavy weapons were being used it is longer.
The ISPR DG said the security forces would try to overcome the resistance with minimum use of force and capture maximum people alive. However, he said, if it comes to using more force, the forces have that capacity. Responding to a question he said that the forces have not captured any relative of high value target.
Authorities have received some vital information from miscreants captured during the ongoing operation in South Waziristan, he said. "We have received some vital and time-sensitive information from those captured in Wana but it is not proper time to disclose it," he said.
He said the authorities have no confirmed reports about presence of high-value targets in South Waziristan. "But the presence of high-value targets in Wana cannot be ruled out because of the way the miscreants are putting up resistance," he said.
Sultan said security forces recovered huge cache of arms and a mobile phone from the dead and captured persons. Responding to another question he said there were no American troops on the ground on Pakistani side of the border but a few American personnel are assisting Pakistan in technical intelligence.
He also dispelled an impression that the current operation has coincided with the arrival of US Secretary of State Colin Powell in Islamabad saying that the operation in Waziristan started on January 8 this year.
Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan said it was merely a speculation that anybody had escaped from South Waziristan Agency during the ongoing operation. "The women and children who vacated the area were properly searched and it was ensured that no terrorist escapes," he said. He said the operation has been launched in the interest of Pakistan to ensure that extremism is rooted out from society. It is in Pakistan’s vital interest that no terrorist uses Pakistani soil for any terrorist activity.
Agencies add: An estimated 300 to 400 tribesmen and foreigners hunkered down on Friday in
mud fortresses, exchanging fire with the Pakistani troops. As the fighting raged, hundreds of civilians poured out of the battle zone in South Waziristan, some injured and others carrying their meagre possessions. Many said they knew nothing about the militants hiding in their midst, and expressed outrage at the scale of the army’s assault. Authorities said they hope to wrap up the raid "during the next 48 hours," a deadline that would end on Sunday afternoon.
The forces were joined by about "a dozen or so" American intelligence agents, who were "assisting Pakistan in technical intelligence and surveillance," said Sultan. He gave no details.
Villagers around Wana reported a lull in the fighting on Friday afternoon, amid efforts by tribal elders to mediate an end to the bloodshed. In Karikot, a town just a few kilometres from the scene of the heaviest fighting, elders convened an emergency Jirga to discuss the situation, accusing the Army of breaking long-standing agreements for conduct in the semiautonomous region.
At the private Rehman Medical Complex in Wana, two young sisters, Haseena, 10 and Asmeena, 2, received first aid after being struck by shrapnel. The girls’ 12-yaer-old brother Din Mohammed was killed when a shell landed near their house in Kaga Panga, a village near the fighting.
Other villagers who had fled to Wana said heavy guns fired through the night and jet fighters were visible in the area, as fighting spread on Friday to two more tribal villages. Residents reported seeing scores of army trucks carrying troops and weapons moving from Wana to the target areas.
A senior security official said Zawahri may have narrowly escaped Tuesday’s raid and a Taliban spokesman claimed both Zawahri and bin Laden were safe in Afghanistan. "He may have slipped the net," the official, asking not to be named, told AFP.
The frenzied speculation was triggered by the sighting of a foreigner being whisked away at high speed in a bullet-proof vehicle on Tuesday when paramilitaries searching for tribesmen were attacked. The Land Cruiser burst out of a tribal compound, two other Land Cruisers emerged to protect it, and scores of fighters appeared from several directions, hurling grenades and firing at the paramilitaries.
The entire unit of 50 troops was "virtually wiped out," the official said. "The way he was whisked away, the way fighters sprang from nowhere, that made us believe that if it was not Osama, and we’re sure it was not, that it was his deputy," the official said.
Some 50 al-Qaeda operatives fleeing South Waziristan had fled to the Afghan frontier towns of Urgun, Gayan and Barmal, where sympathy for the Taliban runs high, an Afghan military officer said.
A Taliban spokesman, Abdul Samad, told AP in a phone interview that both al-Zawahri and Osama are alive and hiding inside Afghanistan, far from the Pakistani guns. "Muslims of the world, don’t worry about them, these two guests, they are fine," he said.
Sultan said two militants were killed on Friday, and eight captured. Among those captured were five foreigners, seized 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.
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