30 killed as Pak forces attack militant base

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan helicopter gunships and ground forces attacked a militant camp in North Waziristan early on Wednesday, killing around 30, according to a political agent for the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.   

 

“It was a training camp of foreign miscreants,” political agent Sayed Zaheerul Islam said.

 

Islam said the attack took place at Saidgai, about 15 km north of Miranshah, the main town in the region.

 

Among those killed was a Chechen commander linked to the Al Qaeda, an army official said.

 

The attack came shortly after 7 am, days before US President George W Bush is due to arrive in Pakistan in a trip that also takes him to India.

 

An ammunition dump at the base, which officials said was near the border with Pakistan, was hit and explosions could be heard in Miranshah.   

 

Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan confirmed the raid but did not have information on casualties.   

 

Shaukat told Geo Television channel there were reports that there were local and foreign fighters in the camp.

A witness said he saw helicopters attack village houses where women and children lived.   

 

Islam said helicopter gunships struck first and ground troops closed in on the camp in the mountains a couple of kilometres from the Afghan border.   

 

The firing had died down and security forces were mopping up and taking care of casualties, Islam said.   

 

The army acted on intelligence received from the Afghan side of the border that a party of militants had returned to Pakistani territory from the Afghan province of Khost, according to the official.   

 

Nek Amal Khan, a tribal elder from the area, said he and two companions were driving to the town early in the morning when a helicopter strafed their van.   

 

He said they jumped out and lay on the ground to play dead, when they saw eight more helicopters fire on the house of a local Muslim cleric, Mullah Noor Peo Khan and his family, and other nearby houses.   
“Then all the troops disembarked from the helicopters and surrounded the village,” the tribal elder said, after bringing his two wounded companions to a hospital in Miranshah.  

 

Khan did know how many people had been killed, or whether other places outside the village had been targeted as well.  

 

A Reuters correspondent in Miranshah heard firing as hundreds of tribesmen, some armed with automatic weapons and rockets, headed out towards Danda Saidgai.

 

A message broadcast by loudspeaker from a madrassa, or Islamic school, had ordered shops and schools to close.

 

US and Afghan forces in Khost and other provinces along the border are frequently harried by Taliban insurgents, Central Asian Islamist militants and remnants of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.   

 

Pakistan comes under frequent pressure to act more forcibly against the fighters, although it has deployed around 80,000 troops in border areas.   

 

A US airstrike in January in the Bajaur tribal agency killed 18 people, raising tribal hackles.