Daily News Channel
Pakistan intensified its military operation to regain control of the country’s northwest from Taliban militants, with fighting focused on the largest city in the Swat Valley on Sunday. Troops were engaged in street battles with militants in Mingora, the gateway into the valley
A Taliban spokesman issued threats and ultimatums against Pakistani officials this week as the country’s military continued its offensive against the militant group in the Swat Valley.
Pakistani civilians were given a brief window on Friday to flee the ongoing fighting between government forces and Taliban militants in the country’s north, according to military officials.
It is in refugee camps like Chotha Lahore, rather than on the battlefields of the Swat Valley, that the outcome of Pakistan’s decisive showdown with the Taliban may be decided. The camp, near the town of Swabi, is sheltering some of the hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis displaced by the government offensive to drive the militants out of the Swat Valley and its surrounds. “The purpose [of the campaign] is to cleanse the areas of these miscreants and militants,” Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told TIME
Pakistan’s offensive against Taliban militants in the country’s northwest is overwhelming medical resources in the Swat Valley, hospital officials said Friday. Staff members from Mardan Medical Center have treated 2,124 patients from clashes between the Pakistani military and Taliban fighters in more than two weeks of fighting, according to Dr. Arshad Ahmed
It isn’t hard to recognize a Pakistani Taliban fighter. Most of the thickly bearded men are barely in their 20s — members of a new and fiercer generation of jihadists
Taliban militants, who implemented Islamic law in Pakistan’s violence-plagued Swat Valley last week, have now taken control of a neighboring district.
Taliban militants released a kidnapped Pakistani official in exchange for two of their men in the troubled Swat Valley, government officials said Monday. Kushal Khan was on his way to take up his new post as the district coordination officer Sunday when unknown gunmen kidnapped him and six members of his security detail near Mingora, the valley’s main city.
Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan announced a 10-day cease-fire on Sunday in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, a volatile region in North West Frontier Province that is largely controlled by the Taliban.