Pakistani fighter jets have bombed suspected militant hideouts in a tribal area on the Afghan border, killing at least 15 people, security officials said, after attempts to engage the Taliban in peace talks collapsed.
"We received information about militant hideouts and based on our intelligence precision strikes were carried out around midnight in the Mir Ali area," an intelligence official told Reuters. "Fifteen militants were killed in the bombing. Thirteen of them were foreign fighters."
Another security official said a cache of arms was destroyed in the strikes.
Nawaz Sharif became prime minister last year with a promise to find a negotiated peace with the Taliban.
But as talks broke down this week the air strikes may herald a broader military offensive in North Waziristan, a region where many insurgents are based.
The army publicly supports Sharif’s call for talks but in private senior officers have expressed frustration, giving rise to talk that the military was waiting for an excuse to mount an armed operation.
The excuse may have come this week when a Taliban wing operating in the tribal Mohmand region said it had executed 23 soldiers in revenge for the killing of its own fighters by army forces.
Thursday morning’s air strikes came a few hours after Pakistan’s army said more than 100 soldiers had been killed by Taliban militants in the last five months, a rare admission of mass casualties.
In an unusually tough statement Sharif’s spokesman said in televised remarks late on Wednesday that the Pakistan army was capable of crushing all enemies.
"The prime minister wants to resolve these issues without bloodshed but if the Taliban continue killing people then we will be left with no choice but to keep our citizens safe from terrorism through any means possible," Pervez Rashid said.
(The Guardian)
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