A Pakistan army air strike on a militant camp near the Afghan border on Tuesday killed up to 20 fighters in a tribal area regarded as a hotbed of support for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, according to intelligence officials.
”The operation was carried out at 6.55am [local time] in Zamzola in South Waziristan, based on information that 25 to 30 miscreants, including foreigners, were present there,” said Major General Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan’s military spokesperson.
Sultan said there was a precision air strike on a cluster of five mud-walled compounds, of which three were completely destroyed, and helicopter gunships mopped up.
The attack came hours after United States Defence Secretary Robert Gates landed in Afghanistan for talks with President Hamid Karzai, and follows comments by senior US officials putting pressure on Pakistan to do more to stop Taliban fighters crossing the border to fight Afghan, Nato and US forces.
In another blow to the Taliban, Afghan security arrested a man said to be a spokesperson for leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Mohammed Hanif was picked up at Torkham, a frontier town at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, after he crossed over from Pakistan, an Afghan intelligence official said.
The target of the air strike in Waziristan was a training base for fighters loyal to a pro-Taliban militant leader called Baitullah Mehsud, according to intelligence officials.
”Our ground forces didn’t participate in the operation and dead bodies and wounded were retrieved by locals,” Sultan said.
Based on intelligence gathered, spokesperson Sultan said the bodies of eight fighters had been retrieved and 10 were wounded.
Intelligence officials from two different agencies said the death toll was more like 20, though they confirmed that of the corpses found so far five were Afghans and the other three belonged to men of the Mehsud tribe. –Reuters