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| Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf arrives at the coalition party headquarters of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in Karachi yesterday |
Pakistan’s new prime minister yesterday condemned cross-border attacks from Afghanistan and said he would discuss the matter with President Hamid Karzai, a day after six Pakistani soldiers were killed.
“Pakistan has strongly protested with Afghanistan on the cross-border attacks and I will also take up this issue with Karzai,” Raja Pervez Ashraf told reporters in Karachi.
His office did not elaborate on when such a conversation might take place.
Pakistani officials said Islamist militants killed six troops on patrol in the Soni Darr area of Upper Dir, a northwestern Pakistani district on the Afghan border.
Intelligence officials said the attackers were loyalists of Pakistani cleric Maulana Fazlullah, who fled into Afghanistan when the army recaptured the Swat valley after a two-year Taliban insurgency ended in 2009.
Afghanistan and Pakistan trade accusations of blame for Taliban violence plaguing both sides of their porous, mountainous border.
Pakistan says rebels have regrouped in eastern Afghanistan. Afghan and US officials want Pakistan to eliminate Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked havens used to launch attacks in Afghanistan.
Pakistani troops have been bogged down for years fighting local Taliban but have resisted US pressure to carry out a sweeping offensive against Afghan Taliban fighters in its North Waziristan district.
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta warned Islamabad earlier this month that Washington was running out of patience over terror safe havens.
Islamabad imposed a blockade, now in its seventh month, on overland Nato supplies into Afghanistan since US air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border on November 26.
Local security officials said 11 of the attackers were also killed in Sunday’s firefight.
“Militants from across the border intruded into the Pakistani area” and clashed with a Pakistani patrol, a security official said.
Confirming the incident, another local security official said up to 50 militants were involved and fled after an exchange of fire lasting 40 minutes.
In April 2009, the army sent 30,000 troops into battle against Taliban fighters controlled by Fazlullah, who since 2007 had terrorised people with a campaign of beheadings, violence and attacks on girls’ schools.
By July 2009 the army declared the picturesque Swat region back under control and said the rebels had all been killed, captured or had fled.
Following similar cross-border attacks by militants in northwestern and tribal areas last year, the military said the rebels had regrouped in Afghanistan’s Kunar and Nuristan provinces.
Pakistan launched operations along parts of the lawless border belt but has resisted US pressure to carry out a sweeping offensive against militants in the North Waziristan tribal region, bordering Afghanistan.
The troubled region is a stronghold of the Haqqani network blamed for a series of spectacular attacks on Western targets in Kabul and of Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud.
Pakistan’s border tribal districts are rife with a homegrown insurgency and are strongholds of Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives.
Washington has increased pressure on Pakistan to take more decisive steps against militants since US Navy SEALs found and killed Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad in May 2011.