Militants behead 4 as Pakistan targets cleric
SWAT, Pakistan - Islamic militants reportedly captured and beheaded three militiamen and a police officer Friday while government troops and helicopter gunships attacked the nearby stronghold of a radical cleric in northwestern Pakistan.
The fighting came a day after a suicide bombing killed 20 people in another part of Swat district in the intensifying conflict between the U.S.-allied government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and pro-Taliban forces in the volatile tribal region along the Afghan border.
After killing the four security officers, the militants displayed the severed heads in Imam Dheri village near Swat, said Badshah Gul Wazir, home secretary for the volatile North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan.
A few hours earlier, militiamen of the regional Frontier Constabulary, supported by army helicopters, attacked the redoubt of cleric Maulana Fazlullah, who runs a sprawling seminary in Imam Dheri and leads a band of armed militants.
“I never saw this type of violence in my life,” said Abdul Hamid, a 70-year-old shop owner in Swat, who sobbed as he watched thick smoke rising from trees set afire on a nearby mountain where fighting also broke out.
“Swat was one of the safest places in Pakistan, and now it has become Iraq and Afghanistan, and I don’t know what will happen in future,” Hamid said.
Pakistan deployed 2,500 militiamen of the regional border-guard force to Swat this week to confront Fazlullah, who leads a banned pro-Taliban group that sent thousands of volunteers to fight in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led invasion six years ago.