ASIF SHAHZAD | AP News, Oct 14, 2008 11:13 EST
Nearly 190,000 people are reported to have fled fighting between Pakistani troops and militants near the border with Afghanistan, the United Nations said Tuesday as fresh clashes in the area killed 17 militants.
Meanwhile, police in the frontier region released a man of dual American-Pakistani citizenship they had arrested Monday in the volatile border region.
Authorities originally described the 20-year-old as a U.S. citizen traveling without the permission foreigners need to enter the region, which has seen of months of fighting between militants and security forces and is considered a possible hiding place for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
“After interrogation we found out he holds dual nationality,” Charsadda district police chief Waqif Khan. “He was roaming in that area just due to his lack of knowledge about the sensitivity there.”
Fighting is spreading across Pakistan’s rugged northwest as the government tries to crack down on insurgents blamed for soaring attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and a bloody campaign of suicide bombings against military and western targets within Pakistan.
Most of the clashes are taking place in Bajur, where the Pakistani military launched a major offensive in early August.
The U.N.’s refugee agency said at least 20,000 Pakistanis and Afghans have fled from Bajur into eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar province since the fighting began.
Citing Pakistani statistics, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement that 168,463 other people had fled to other parts of northwestern Pakistan during the offensive. The agency said it was not able to independently confirm the figure.
It said most refugees, on both sides of the border, were staying with host families. But the agency said it was helping those who are staying in several temporary camps in Pakistan.
In the latest violence in Bajur, Pakistani fighter jets pounded militant trenches on Tuesday, killing five suspected insurgents, while overnight artillery and mortar attacks left 12 extremists dead, said government official Muhammad Jamil Khan. Two pro-government tribesmen also died in the fighting, he said.
Pakistan’s secular, pro-Western government says it is trying to forge a national consensus on how to combat terrorism. However, many Pakistanis blame the violence on their country’s support for U.S. policy in its pursuit of al-Qaida and the Taliban.
On Tuesday, a small group of Islamic political parties announced that suicide bombings were not permitted under Islam, a declaration likely to please the government. Pakistan has been plagued by such attacks, including one that killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and 20 other people in December 2007 and a blast at the Marriott Hotel last month in which more than 50 died.
“We, the religious scholars, believe that the suicide bombings in Pakistan are illegitimate. Islam does not allow it,” said a leader of the alliance, Dr. Sarfraz Naeemi.
But Naeemi also called on the government to halt its military operations in the border region and allow a fact-finding mission of religious scholars to visit there.
Source: AP News
Tags: Bajaur, fighting in Pakistan, Pakistani army and militants, refugees, religious scholars
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