Army chief General Raheel Sharif.
PHOTO: AFP
The briefing was given during his visit to the Corps Headquarters in Peshawar, according to the military’s media wing, the ISPR. The army chief expressed satisfaction over the ‘steady progress’ in the ongoing military operations in North Waziristan and Khyber tribal agencies.
The military launched a massive operation, codenamed Zarb-e-Azb, in North Waziristan against a potpourri of local and foreign militants on June 15, 2015. A few months later, Operation Khyber-I was mounted in the militant-infested Tirah Valley and Bara areas of Khyber Agency in mid-October. In the meantime, intelligence-led targeted operations were initiated against banned groups in the urban centres of the country.
Gen Raheel reaffirmed the army’s determination to take these operations to a logical conclusion. “Terrorists squeezed in isolated pockets will be targeted with precision for elimination,” he was quoted as saying by the chief military spokesperson, Maj Gen Asim Salim Bajwa. The army chief made it clear that the counterterrorism operations would continue at all costs till terrorists were eliminated from the country’s urban centres and remote areas.
According to the ISPR, the army chief also visited the Combined Military Hospital in Peshawar where he met soldiers wounded during the ongoing operations in the tribal areas. Paying tributes to these soldiers, he said their ‘resolve and high spirit’ was reassuring and an ‘asset’ for the army and the nation.
Officials said Gen Raheel and the Peshawar corps commander also reviewed arrangements for the repatriation of tens of thousands of tribesmen temporarily displaced due to the military operations.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 23rd, 2015.
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