The army said Saturday it had captured Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud’s hometown after fierce fighting as it pressed a major offensive against the militants into a second week.

Security sources said they had overrun Kotkai overnight after three days of aerial bombardments which had underlined the huge challenge facing the military in taking on the Taliban in their tribal heartland in the northwest.

With the militants continuing to carry out attacks country-wide since the army assault began, including one Friday outside an air force base, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the unrest had hit every sector of society.

Although figures are impossible to verify, the army says more than 140 militants and 20 troops have been killed in the week-long army offensive to date.

Earlier Saturday, the military said another six militants had been killed in clashes with security forces in Kotkai.

While no current casualty figures were immediately available from Kotkai, several security officials said the fighting there was over.

There has been no word on the whereabouts of Mehsud since the operation began.

‘Security forces took control of Kotkai overnight and a clearance operation is in progress,’ a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity, describing the capture as ‘a major breakthrough’.

Another security official said that ground forces had surrounded Kotkai for the last three days as jets and helicopter gunships pounded militant positions.

‘Security forces entered Kotkai late Friday after they had secured important heights behind it,’ the official said.

The army launched the drive last Saturday, pitting around 30,000 troops against an estimated 10,000-12,000 Taliban fighters where Al-Qaeda-linked militants are believed to have plotted attacks against the west as well as in Pakistan.

The army had promised to make the Taliban leadership a particular target of their offensive and sealed off the main road into Kotkai last weekend.

Pakistan’s semi-autonomous northwest tribal belt has become a stronghold for hundreds of extremists who fled Afghanistan after the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan in late 2001.

Although the government has said the offensive will deal a decisive blow to the militants, the insurgents have continued to carry out attacks in Pakistani cities since the start of the operation, with the military a major target.

On Friday, a bomb attack outside a Pakistani Air Force base killed eight people, six civilians and two air force personnel. On Thursday in Islamabad gunmen killed a brigadier and his driver.

Nearly 200 people have been killed in attacks this month alone.

‘The country is engaged in a war to free the nation from the menace of terrorism that has destroyed the peace of the land, bruised the economy and most importantly threatened the freedom of our people,’ Gilani told a meeting of his top security officials late Friday, according to a government statement.

‘The wave of militancy has adversely affected every segment of society.’

Addressing the same meeting, chief of staff Ashfaq Kayani said ‘the ongoing military operation in South Waziristan is moving ahead successfully towards their desired objective while trying to ensure minimum collateral damage’.

His comments came after Jacques de Maio, the International Committee of the Red Cross head of operations for South Asia, said there had been ‘a sharp and extremely worrying increase in the number of civilian casualties.’

However, the operation has retained cross-party support in Pakistan and won praise from the United States, which has grown increasingly alarmed at the security situation in the nation which borders Afghanistan.

Announcing plans for both himself and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to visit soon, Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama’s special envoy to the region, said the US is ‘very impressed with the Pakistani resolve’.

‘They know what the stakes are. And having spent a lot of time with General Kayani and his colleagues, I know how determined they are,’ Holbrooke told reporters in Washington.

{Source: AFP}