Air strikes targeting Haqqanis kill 20

TTP chief narrowly escapes US drone strike in Afghanistan .

MIRAMSHAH/ PESHAWAR/ ISLAMABAD:

At least 2o militants, including members of the Haqqani Network, were killed when military warplanes bombed their hideouts in the Datta Khel tehsil of North Waziristan Agency on Tuesday.

The air blitz came amid reports that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Mullah Fazlullah narrowly escaped a US drone strike in eastern Afghanistan late Monday night.

A brief statement issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said that “20 terrorists were killed in precise aerial strikes in the troubled agency”. It didn’t give further details.

A security official, however, said the air raid targeted hideouts of militants in the Doga Mada Khel area of Datta Khel, 65 kilometres west of Miramshah, the administrative headquarters of North Waziristan, around 12:30pm. He added that the airstrike flattened ‘multiple hideouts’ of militants.

Two intelligence officials told AFP that the fighter jets targeted hideouts of the Haqqani Network and of local warlord Hafiz Gul Bahadur. “The dead included seven fighters of the Haqqanis while the rest belonged to the Gul Bahadur group,” one intelligence official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

A second intelligence official confirmed that fighters of the Haqqani Network and Hafiz Gul Bahadur group were the target. He added that a local Haqqani commander was among the dead, but his identity had not yet been ascertained.

Soon after the raid, Datta Khel Bazaar was closed and a curfew was imposed in the region as local tribesmen rushed to the spot to retrieve bodies from the rubble.

Bahadur, known as the host of the Haqqani Network, heads the Shura Mujahideen North Waziristan which has declared war on the security forces in revenge for Operation Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan.

The Haqqani Network has been accused of carrying out some of the most audacious attacks on US-led foreign forces in Afghanistan including Sunday’s horrific suicide bombing at a volleyball match in the Paktika province that killed at least 57 people.

US and Afghan officials allege that the Haqqani Network enjoys support from Pakistan’s security establishment – a charge always denied by Islamabad.

Meanwhile security officials said the elusive TTP chief, Mullah Fazlullah, is believed to have narrowly escaped a US drone strike in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar late Monday night.

An unspecified number of militants were killed in the strike that happened in the Nazyan district of Nangarhar which borders the remote Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency where a security operation has been ongoing since mid-October.

A senior security official confirmed to The Express Tribune that Mullah Fazlullah was present in the area when the drone strike took place. “Mullah Fazlullah was sighted in the area around 18 hours before the attack,” he said but refused to confirm the TTP chief was killed. The exact number of militants killed in the air strike was not immediately known. Intelligence sources, however, said those killed might have been affiliated with the Afghan Taliban. “The information is still sketchy. We will have to wait for details to confirm who exactly was targeted,” he added.

A senior al Qaeda operative, Sheikh Imran Ali Siddiqi, was also killed in a US drone strike in the same region in October.

Another security official said that support was drying up and space shrinking for militants as a result of Operation Khyber-I. “They [militants] would flee into neighbouring Afghanistan when the local support is eliminated,” he added.

Several militants have been killed and many more have surrendered to the authorities during Operation Khyber-I which is being described as an extension of Operation Zarb-e-Azb.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 26^th, 2014.