Pak bombs wreck anti-British firebrand’s mosque
(AFP)
11 October 2007
IPPI, Pakistan - The bombs that fell on this Pakistani tribal village spared little — and certainly not the historic mosque of an Islamic firebrand who led a rebellion against the British in the last century.
Pakistani jets launched air strikes on Ippi in the tribal zone of North Waziristan on Tuesday, amid some of the fiercest clashes in the Afghan border area since Islamabad joined the US-led “war on terror” in 2001.
The military said it targeted militant hideouts and that 50 pro-Taleban rebels were killed. But the few remaining residents of this village said the victims were all civilians, who died when the bombs hit a crowded bazaar.“It was like hell let loose. I thought that we had been struck by an earthquake,” shopkeeper Abdul Sattar Khan told an AFP reporter who reached the nearly deserted settlement.
Since the clashes started in North Waziristan on Sunday, around 200 militants and 47 soldiers have died, the army says.
About 60 percent of this village of 5,000 people has been reduced to ruins, the AFP reporter said, including the Fakir of Ippi mosque, a local landmark in this parched and mountainous region.
The mosque is named after the Fakir of Ippi, a wild Pashtun tribal leader who fought all occupiers for nearly three decades — first the British colonialists and then, after independence in 1947, Pakistani forces too.
He died in his bed in 1960, a free man, in what has been seen as an unpromising precedent for the hunt for Al Qaeda militants in the area including, possibly, Osama bin Laden.
Rubble was all that remained of the mosque after the strikes, previously a symbol of the conservative and semi-autonomous region’s defiance against the government in Islamabad.
Cattle heads lay infested with flies in the empty streets nearby.
The few remaining residents denied official claims that Ippi, the nearby hills and major town of Mir Ali some two kilometres (1.5 miles) away, are a sanctuary for jihadis who fled Afghanistan after the fall of the Taleban.
“They have killed innocent people and destroyed their homes. Everyone knows that there are no militants in this area,” said Khan.
The shopkeeper said jets came around 3:00 pm on Tuesday as the market was packed with shoppers from Mir Ali, where the army had closed the local bazaar when the clashes broke out.
“The sudden heavy bombing panicked people who were crying, screaming and running wildly in all directions,” he said.
The doors of many of the deserted houses, from which people had apparently fled in a hurry, hung on their hinges.
Not a single member of the tribal police force or other officials could now be seen.
Another witness, Mohammad Ali, said he was in Mir Ali on Tuesday when he saw three F-16 jets launching “pencil-shaped” missiles at Ippi.
“I heard several explosions after the jets fired the missiles and after a while injured men, women and children with bleeding wounds came running towards the stream,” Ali said.
Troops sealed off Mir Ali hospital, the only one in the town, and no one was given permission to enter, locals said.
The hospital was only admitting wounded security men, they said.
Dozens of injured civilians including women and children were taken to a hospital in the neighbouring town of Bannu.
An unofficial ceasefire held in the area on Wednesday as tribesmen buried the dead and uttered funeral prayers.
But the area was tense and panic-struck as Pakistani gunship helicopters flew over and residents feared yet another round of violence
