Pakistani troops have killed more than 1,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels, including five top commanders, in a month-long offensive near the Afghan border, the military said yesterday.
Twenty-seven soldiers also died in the operation in Bajaur, one of Pakistan’s seven lawless tribal regions along the porous frontier, said Tariq Khan, inspector general of the paramilitary Frontier Corps.
“The overall toll is over 1,000 militants,” Khan told reporters who were taken by helicopter to see the scene of the fighting in remote Bajaur.
He said four of the militant commanders appeared to be foreigners: Egyptian Abu Saeed al-Masri; Abu Suleiman, an Arab; an Uzbek commander named Mullah Mansoor; and an Afghan commander called Manaras.
The fifth was a Pakistani commander named only Abdullah, a son of aging hardline leader Maulvi Faqir Mohammad who is based in Bajaur and has close ties to al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Bajaur, which borders the troubled Afghan province of Kunar, has seen some of the fiercest fighting between Pakistani forces and Islamist militants since Islamabad joined the US-led “war on terror” in 2001.
It was also the scene of a missile strike that narrowly missed Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s number two, in January 2006.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
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