Pakistan Says It Killed 50 Taliban in a Clash, but Residents Say Civilians Died
By CARLOTTA GALL
PULO DAND, Pakistan
The Pakistani military said it had killed more than 50 Taliban fighters in tough fighting in Buner on Friday, but families pouring out of the district said civilians were being killed, too.
People were asked not to leave their houses, said Abdul Bakht, 40, a farmer from Ambela, who had fled here to the south. But the problem is they have not fired on a single Talib yet. All they are doing is hitting the houses.
He and other civilians caught in the operation, just in its fourth day, were already complaining of heavy-handed tactics by the Pakistani military, which has little training in counterinsurgency.
A military spokesman claimed steady progress in the operation but also said the militants were putting up fierce resistance.
The civilian complaints and the Taliban resistance pointed to the difficult task ahead for the military in driving the militants from Buner, a district just 60 miles from the capital, where hundreds of Taliban fighters advanced last week, setting off alarm here and abroad.
Trying to revive a peace accord with the Taliban from February, government officials restarted talks with Maulana Sufi Muhammad, the religious cleric who helped mediate the deal.
The provincial government said it was committed to appointing Islamic judges as part of the deal covering the Swat Valley and Buner. Maulana Muhammad, despite his protest at the military operation, promised the militants would lay down their weapons once Islamic law was in force.
But in what is clearly a two-pronged approach by the Pakistani authorities, military operations also intensified.
The military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said forces had succeeded in opening up access from the west to Buners central town of Daggar and were close to linking up from the south after heavy fighting at the Ambela Pass.
At least 55 militants had been killed in fighting in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total killed so far to more than 100, he said. Two members of the paramilitary Frontier Corps were killed and eight wounded in a house rigged with explosives, he said.
Militants were using antiaircraft weapons mounted on cars and recoilless rifles, and army helicopters had focused attacks on militants in cars and motorcycles on the roads.
Yet accounts from people fleeing the region said that civilians were being caught up in the fighting in Ambela and on the roads. Taliban militants had strong positions in the hills and could still resist the military advance, they said.
Villagers traveled on foot and along country roads to reach this village in the neighboring district of Swabi on Friday, their belongings piled on small vans with women and children, and even cows, packed together inside.
Officials from Al Khidmat Foundation, a religious humanitarian organization assisting the families, said more than a thousand vehicles had ferried families out in just one day.
In one house that was hit, two children died, a woman lost both legs, and a man was so seriously wounded that the family had already dug his grave and were waiting for him to die, Mr. Bakht, the farmer, said.
Three men, who tried to drive toward the military to ask them to stop firing on the houses, were also killed when a helicopter fired rockets on their car, Mr. Bakht said. A fourth man was wounded.
Two of those killed were government school examiners from the nearby Swat Valley who were in Buner to conduct school examinations when the operation started. One of the dead men was a friend of Mr. Bakhts.
Instead of stopping the bombardment, they fired on the car, he said. There is still a curfew and their bodies are still there on the road.
A laborer, Hakim Noor, said, We thought if they can bring peace we are happy with the army but now it seems they are hitting houses. He who left his village Kowgah two days ago.
His uncle Jamal Noor, who escaped the village on Friday, said there was shooting in the upper part of the village and helicopters were firing rockets at the houses. Helicopters were also landing in the hills behind where the Taliban had positions.
Now they will increasingly hit the villages as now they think they are empty and the Taliban will come down into them, Mr. Noor said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/world/asia/02pstan.html
..Just do whatever is best for Pakistan.
(pun)
