BUNER, Pakistan, (Reuters) – Pakistani troops took the main town in strategically important Buner Valley yesterday after dropping by helicopter behind Taliban lines, killing more than 50 militants in two days, the military said.
A U.S. drone fired a missile into another region, the major al Qaeda sanctuary of South Waziristan, killing six militants in the latest such attack by U.S. forces in Pakistan’s border areas with Afghanistan.
The strike targeted a vehicle and two of the militants were foreigners, an intelligence official told Reuters from the region.
The Taliban’s advance earlier this month into Buner, just 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital, had sent shivers through Pakistan and heightened fears in the United States that the nuclear-armed Muslim state was becoming more unstable.
“We assure the nation that armed forces have the capability to ward off any kind of threat,” military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas told a news conference in Rawalpindi, the garrison town close to the capital, Islamabad.
Pakistan used jet fighters at the start of the operation on Tuesday, then deployed helicopter gunships which inflicted more than 50 casualties, Abbas said. One soldier was killed.
The militants’ growing clout deep into Pakistan’s northwest has raised alarm bells across Pakistan and the United States.
Pakistani stocks lost more than 2 percent on Wednesday due to worries over mounting insecurity.
Taliban fighters had held the entrances to the valley, but they risked being caught between security forces at their front and rear after the successful airdrop.
