Peshawar, PAKISTAN (AFP)
Pakistan has offered a $615,000 reward for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of Taliban head Baitullah Mehsud, currently holed up in the northwest tribal belt as Taliban fighters fired rockets at Pakistani forces Sunday.
Two national Urdu-language newspapers and local papers in the northwest city of Peshawar carried an advert offering the 50-million-rupee ($615,300) reward for Mehsud, and other amounts for 10 of his senior militants.
"The government has announced a cash reward for anybody providing authentic information leading to the capture of these (11), dead or alive," said the advertisement.
It then goes on to list the 11 men, along with their bounties.
Fayyaz Tooro, home secretary of the North West Frontier Province, confirmed to AFP that the government had taken out the advert.
Mehsud already has a five-million-dollar bounty on his head offered by the United States, with the U.S. State Department branding the warlord "a key al-Qaeda facilitator in the tribal areas of South Waziristan."
Taliban fighters fired rockets at Pakistani forces in the lawless tribal belt Sunday, killing an officer and injuring three as fighter jets pounded the region ahead of an offensive there, officials said. |
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Heavy clashes Heavy casualties have resulted from ongoing clashes between Pakistan army forces and Taliban Taliban fighters fired at Pakistani foces in the lawless tribal bet killing an officer and injuring three as fighter jets pounded the region ahead of an offensive there, officials said.
Security forces, wrapping up a two-month campaign against Islamist fighters in and around northwest Swat valley, are opening up a second front against Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud along the Afghan border.
"Rockets fired by militants from unknown locations hit a camp of paramilitary Frontier Corps Saturday night in South Waziristan tribal region, wounding four soldiers," a security official in the area told AFP.
One of the four later died, the security official said, and the army confirmed the death in its daily update on the northwest, saying "one non-commissioned officer embraced shahadat (martyrdom)" at Tanai Fort.
Security forces retaliated and shelled militant hideouts in Shin Warsak, Ghawakhwa and Azam Warsak villages in the rugged mountainous region, where the U.S. alleges al-Qaeda rebels are hiding, the security official said.
Fighter jets also bombarded rebel hideouts in the Taperghai and Kotkai areas of South Waziristan on Sunday morning, another security official said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties. |
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Ongoing offensive Military and government officials announced the assault against Mehsud and his network in mid-June, vowing to track down and eliminate the warlord blamed for a wave of deadly blasts in Pakistan in the past two years.
Fighter jets and helicopter gunships have been targeting Islamist positions in the semi-autonomous tribal zone for weeks, but it remains unclear when a full-scale offensive will begin into the hostile, rugged terrain.
Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt has become a stronghold for hundreds of extremists who fled Afghanistan after a U.S.-led invasion toppled the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.
Security forces launched an offensive to dislodge Taliban guerrillas from three northwest districts after the insurgents flouted a peace deal and thrust towards the capital Islamabad in early April.
The army says that nearly 1,600 insurgents and 139 soldiers have been killed in operations the military launched in the northwestern districts of Lower Dir on April 26, Buner on April 28 and Swat on May 8.
Such tolls are impossible to independently verify. |
