Pakistani security forces killed 33 militants on Sunday as part of a week-old campaign in the Khyber Pass, the main land route used to supply Western and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.
Based on official statements nearly 120 insurgents have been killed in the past week, but independent casualty estimates are unavailable.
The military swung into action in Khyber, one of Pakistan’s seven semi-autonomous tribal regions, days after a suicide bomber killed 22 border guards.
Aside from militant factions based in Khyber, other fighters fled there to escape an assault further east on the Taliban stronghold in the Swat valley, where the army went on the offensive in late April.
Truck convoys carrying supplies to US, NATO and Afghan forces regularly come under attack as they trundle through the pass that links Pakistan and Afghanistan.
During Sunday’s fighting, troops cleared two militant compounds and demolished 17 houses said to belong to insurgents.
“Security forces targeted two militant centers. They destroyed them and killed 33 militants in the operation,” a Frontier Corps spokesman said in a statement.
Nine militants were taken into custody and two people kidnapped by militants were recovered.
The region is largely off-limits to journalists, making it difficult to verify the information independently.
The show of force in Swat and elsewhere has helped allay fears among Western allies that the nuclear-armed Muslim nation was failing to confront spreading Islamist militancy.
Thousands of civilians have fled the region in the fighting.
Farooq Khan, a government official in Khyber, said hundreds of families fled the region since authorities relaxed a curfew on Friday.
He said security forces were “keeping a strict eye” out for any militants trying to blend in.
The Taliban-affiliated group Lashkar-e-Islam is a main target in the latest offensive, which authorities say has killed about 120 alleged militants.
Meanwhile, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Sunday that there were indications an attack on Sri Lanka’s cricket team in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore earlier this year was financed from Sri Lanka.
Gilani said he was told this by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
“He was telling me that, ‘We have got some clues, that finances were made from Sri Lanka to Pakistan,’” Gilani said, referring to a recent meeting with Rajapaksa in Libya.
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.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS