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26 March 2010

Pakistani Taliban trying to assert themselves

Pakistani troops kill 34 militants after an attack designed to show the Taliban haven't been 'weakened.' So what good does it do hurling themselves at certain death? Who knows...

Pakistani troops killed at least 34 militants after about 150 Taliban attacked a military checkpost in the northwest on Friday, challenging government assertions crackdowns have weakened the group.

Homegrown Taliban rebels are seeking to topple the U.S.-backed government of unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari, who has been pressured to hand over some of his key powers, such as dissolving parliament and appointing military chiefs.

A senior military officer and four paramilitary soldiers were also killed in the attack in Orakzai, a day after Pakistani jets killed nearly 50 people, mostly militants, in strikes on a school and a seminary in the same region, a government official said.

Fourteen soldiers were wounded in the Taliban assault.


Pakistani jets also bombed Taliban-linked madrasas.

Pakistani jets pounded suspected Taliban positions in a one-two punch on Thursday that killed nearly 50 people, most of them militants, in a restive tribal region in the northwest, officials said.

The two attacks targeted a school used by the Taliban as well as a madrasa or Islamic seminary in the Mamuzai area of the Orakzai Agency, an ethnic Pashtun tribal region where many militants fled to escape an army offensive further south.

"Twenty-five bodies of militants have been recovered from the school," Asghar Khan, a government official, told Reuters by telephone from Kalaya, the main town of Orakzai.

He said 13 militants were killed in the madrasa.


By: Brant

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