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Militants attack Pakistan checkpost, two dead
By Lehaz Ali (AFP) 3 hours ago
PESHAWAR, Pakistan Scores of Islamist militants armed with rifles and rocket launchers attacked a Pakistani police checkpoint before dawn Wednesday, killing two officers and wounding five others, police said.
There was no confirmation of casualties among the militants because police said the attackers fled after the furious shootout, which took officers an hour to fend off in the suburbs of the northwestern city of Peshawar.
The checkpost in Sarband is near Khyber, part of Pakistan's lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border where missiles fired by CIA drones have killed Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives. Washington has called the region the most dangerous place on earth.
Police said they repelled an earlier attack at around midnight (1900 GMT Tuesday), but another group of 70 Taliban fighters armed with guns and rocket launchers again laid siege before dawn.
It took police about an hour to fend off each attack, Mohammad Ijaz Khan, a senior police officer, told AFP.
"Two of our policemen were martyred and five wounded," Khan said, noting that the attackers threw hand grenades and fired rockets at the checkpost.
He said the attackers came from Khyber and fled back in the same direction after staging what appeared to be a carefully, planned and stealthy hit.
"They travelled in vehicles towards the checkpost, then left the vehicles in the tribal area and reached the checkpost on foot using infrequent routes."
Police said the assailants were either from Pakistan's umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban faction or local warlord Mangal Bagh's extremist group Lashkar-e-Islam, both of which have a presence in Khyber.
Pakistani government forces have been fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants in the northwest for years, and thousands of soldiers have lost their lives in a conflict that many in Pakistan see as America's war.
Pakistan was an ally of the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan, but sided with the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks and Khyber is now a key transit point for supplies for NATO troops based in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has received $18 billion from the United States in the last decade, but its troops have been unable to put down a homegrown insurgency in the northwest despite waging numerous offensives in much of the tribal belt.
A covert US operation that found and killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani military academy town just two hours' drive from Islamabad on May 2 has raised serious questions about whether anyone in Pakistan was sheltering him.
Although Pakistan has launched campaigns against homegrown militants, the United States also wants the military to crackdown on groups who use Pakistani territory as a sanctuary to attack Americans across the border in Afghanistan
By Lehaz Ali (AFP) 3 hours ago
PESHAWAR, Pakistan Scores of Islamist militants armed with rifles and rocket launchers attacked a Pakistani police checkpoint before dawn Wednesday, killing two officers and wounding five others, police said.
There was no confirmation of casualties among the militants because police said the attackers fled after the furious shootout, which took officers an hour to fend off in the suburbs of the northwestern city of Peshawar.
The checkpost in Sarband is near Khyber, part of Pakistan's lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border where missiles fired by CIA drones have killed Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives. Washington has called the region the most dangerous place on earth.
Police said they repelled an earlier attack at around midnight (1900 GMT Tuesday), but another group of 70 Taliban fighters armed with guns and rocket launchers again laid siege before dawn.
It took police about an hour to fend off each attack, Mohammad Ijaz Khan, a senior police officer, told AFP.
"Two of our policemen were martyred and five wounded," Khan said, noting that the attackers threw hand grenades and fired rockets at the checkpost.
He said the attackers came from Khyber and fled back in the same direction after staging what appeared to be a carefully, planned and stealthy hit.
"They travelled in vehicles towards the checkpost, then left the vehicles in the tribal area and reached the checkpost on foot using infrequent routes."
Police said the assailants were either from Pakistan's umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban faction or local warlord Mangal Bagh's extremist group Lashkar-e-Islam, both of which have a presence in Khyber.
Pakistani government forces have been fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants in the northwest for years, and thousands of soldiers have lost their lives in a conflict that many in Pakistan see as America's war.
Pakistan was an ally of the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan, but sided with the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks and Khyber is now a key transit point for supplies for NATO troops based in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has received $18 billion from the United States in the last decade, but its troops have been unable to put down a homegrown insurgency in the northwest despite waging numerous offensives in much of the tribal belt.
A covert US operation that found and killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani military academy town just two hours' drive from Islamabad on May 2 has raised serious questions about whether anyone in Pakistan was sheltering him.
Although Pakistan has launched campaigns against homegrown militants, the United States also wants the military to crackdown on groups who use Pakistani territory as a sanctuary to attack Americans across the border in Afghanistan
