Pakistan begins “full-fledged” attack on Taliban

ISLAMABAD (Agencies)

Pakistan has launched a "full-fledged" assault against Taliban in the lawless northwest tribal belt and will continue until all militants are eliminated, the provincial governor said Sunday.

The announcement came hours after a bomb in a market killed eight people in a northwest Pakistani town, the latest in a wave of attacks since the army launched an offensive against Taliban militants in the Swat valley northwest of Islamabad.

Owais Ahmad Ghani, governor of the North West Frontier Province

Security forces are already locked in a seven-week-long campaign against the insurgents in three other northwest districts, and last week the offensive spread into the semi-autonomous tribal zone along the Afghan border.

"The government has launched a full-fledged operation in the tribal areas including Waziristan," Owais Ahmad Ghani, governor of the North West Frontier Province, told a press conference in Islamabad.

"Operations will continue until the elimination of the militants.

Hunt for Mehsud

Owais Ahmad Ghani

The tribal region is a stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud, head of umbrella Taliban group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and Washington alleges that Islamist extremists are in Waziristan plotting attacks on Western targets.

"We have ordered all the law enforcing agencies to start a full-fledged operation against Baitullah Mehsud and his followers," said Ghani.

"These are the people who are responsible for all of the bombing, terrorism, (and) killing of innocent people."

A spokesman for Mehsud has claimed that TTP were behind a string of deadly attacks in Pakistan in recent weeks, widely seen as retribution for the military operation that began around Swat valley in late April.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan is struggling to push back a growing Taliban insurgency and security forces have made progress in more than a month of fighting against militants in Swat.