By Mushtaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR: Around 22 people, including 14 suspected militants and eight civilians, were killed and several others injured seriously in latest air strikes by the PAF jet fighters and military gunship helicopters on suspected locations of the Taliban in the Bajaur Agency on Tuesday.
Also, militants handed over the bodies of five soldiers to a tribal Jirga who were killed in a Taliban's ambush on August 6 in Loisam area. The PAF jet fighters flew after almost four days of pause in bombing and blitzed heavily militants suspected hideouts in Charmang, Mamond and Nawagai subdivisions of the militancy-stricken tribal region.
Military authorities said 14 militants were killed and several others injured in the fighting after a large number of Taliban fighters attacked the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) personnel and political administration officials at the Nawagai Civil Colony on Monday night.
Armed with sophisticated weapons, the militants reportedly opened fire on the law-enforcers, who had taken positions in their sandbag bunkers on rooftops. The officials said the FC men returned fire and forced the militants to retreat.
Later, the security forces fired artillery and mortar shells from paramilitary Bajaur Scouts' headquarters in Khar on militant positions in Nawagai and killed 14 of them. Similarly, the officials said several other militants suffered injuries in artillery and mortar shelling and their hideouts were destroyed.
On the other hand, a Taliban commander, who introduced himself as Qari Ziaur Rahman, called The News from the Bajaur Agency and claimed responsibility for the attack on paramilitary forces in Nawagai.
He said only one of their fighters died and another sustained injuries in the artillery and mortar shelling on their positions in Nawagai. Also, he claimed, his fighters took seven FC men as hostage, destroyed all bunkers of the troops built on rooftops and snatched 20 G-III, four AK-47 assault rifles and three light machine-guns (LMG) from the soldiers during fighting.
Qari Ziaur Rahman, who is reportedly an Afghan Taliban commander operating in Afghanistan's Kunar and Nuristan provinces, was captured in Peshawar by the law-enforcers and he was among several other Taliban fighters released in return for Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan Tariq Azizuddin.
Qari said he and his tribal fighters were ready to stop fighting against Pakistani security forces if the military operation and aerial bombing in the Bajaur Agency was stopped. "Our mission is to wage Jihad against US-led forces in Afghanistan but Pakistan forced us to fight against its own security forces by creating hurdles for us to cross the border and destroy positions of our fellow tribal Mujahideen in Bajaur," explained the Taliban commander.
Similarly, seven people, including women and children were killed when four jet fighters and gunship helicopters blitzed militants' alleged hideouts in Nawagai. Tribal sources said the warplanes and military choppers continued bombing on several villages, including Chinar Charmang, Asghar Charmang and Kotkai Charmang in the restive Nawagai subdivision.
Military authorities said militants had occupied houses of local tribesmen, which the war-frightened tribesmen had vacated due to military operation. Tribal sources said a woman died and her two children suffered injuries when a mortar shell hit her house at Shah Khani village of the Mamond tehsil.
Tribespeople also reported that nine people, including three women and six children were killed in the aerial strikes by the jetfighters on Kamangara village near Sharif Khana in Mamond.
Military officials closely monitoring the ongoing operation, however, denied reports of the killing of innocent people. Military sources said that four warplanes and gunship helicopters targeted militants' suspected locations throughout the day and inflicted heavy losses on the tribal militants.
They, however, didn't provide any details about the losses suffered by the Taliban fighters in the daylong bombing. Meanwhile, Taliban fighters finally agreed to hand over bodies of five slain security personnel to a jirga of tribal elders and shopkeepers.
A former agency councillor, Haji Rahat Yousaf, led the jirga, comprising Syed Rahim, chairman, Anjuman-e-Tajiran Bajaur Agency, Abdur Rahim, president shopkeepers of Inayat Kalley bazaar, etc and held talks with militant commanders at Omari village.
The Jirga was later given permission by the Taliban to go to Loisam and retrieve the bodies of the five slain soldiers. According to jirga members, they were given several coffins by the military officials in Khar to wrap up bodies of the slain soldiers but they recovered only five corpses.
These bodies, they said, were lying in the maize fields and had been decomposed.The Jirga members later took the bodies to Khar and handed them over to the military authorities.
Sources also said that military authorities had started transporting Pakistan army soldiers to Nawagai for securing the strategically important area to counter militants' growing influence and disrupt their supply line via Mohmand Agency and stop reinforcement of militants from Mohmand and other tribal regions.
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