Pakistan bombs militant hide-outs; thousands flee

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Pakistani jets pounded suspected militant hide-outs along the Afghan border Wednesday as officials said hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled South Waziristan in anticipation of an expected military offensive.

Government officials have threatened an operation in the lawless border area for months, but they said a string of recent suicide bombings blamed on the Taliban has strengthened their resolve to engage in what will likely be a long and bloody confrontation.

About 200,000 people have fled South Waziristan since August, moving in with relatives or renting homes in the Tank and Dera Ismail Khan areas in an exodus that has continued in recent days, a local government official said. About half registered with the government as displaced people, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

While there are no recent census data from South Waziristan, estimates of the population hover around 500,000.

Police officer Naimatullah Khan said in recent days 80 vehicles a day have carried fleeing families past the Chonda checkpoint on the edge of the region, where security officials were screening the departing civilians.

Military jets have been hitting suspected Taliban strongholds in the region for weeks. The airstrikes have grown more frequent in recent days in what appears to be an effort to soften up the militants ahead of a ground assault.

Haji Ayub Mehsud, 55, said the increased bombing over the past three days left him no choice but to flee along backroads with his six children.

“It is difficult for local people to stay there in peace. I had to bring out my family,” Mehsud told an AP reporter after passing through Chonda checkpoint.

In a fresh wave of bombing Wednesday night, military jets pounded a cave in the Spinkai area, killing eight people.

Local tribesmen said the victims were all civilians, including three women and three children, who had abandoned their home and fled to the cave to seek shelter from the heavy shelling. The two tribesman spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals if they spoke to the media.

Intelligence officials, however, said the bombs hit a suspected militant hide-out, killing eight insurgents. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Independent confirmation of the attacks was not available. The army has barred reporters from the region.

The strike came after a wave of air attacks late Tuesday and early Wednesday that hit at least five different areas, killing nine insurgents, the intelligence officials said.

Pakistan has been hit by four major terrorist attacks over the last 10 days, including a suicide bombing of a U.N. office in the capital, Islamabad, and a 22-hour siege of the army’s headquarters just outside the capital.

The military says 80 percent of the attacks in Pakistan are planned from South Waziristan but that militants from the Punjab province in the heart of the country helped the Taliban with the assault on army headquarters.

The U.S. has encouraged Pakistan to take strong action against insurgents who are using its soil as a base for attacks in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are bogged down in an increasingly difficult war. But a push into rugged South Waziristan could be difficult for the army, which was beaten back on three previous offensives into the Taliban heartland there and forced to sign peace deals.

An army spokesman declined to say when the South Waziristan offensive would begin and gave no indication it was imminent.

The new airstrikes came as Pakistan’s foreign minister visited Washington to persuade U.S. officials to change the terms of a U.S. aid bill. The legislation promises $1.5 billion a year over the next five years — but on the condition that Pakistan’s weak, U.S.-backed civilian government maintain effective control over the military, including its budgets, the chain of command and top promotions.

The objections to the bill have driven a wedge between the military and the government in Islamabad over an aid drive that was supposed to show American support for the country as it battles the insurgents.

Associated Press writers Foster Klug in Washington and Hussain Afzal in Parachinar contributed to this report.