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Pakistan: Militants crossing in from Afghanistan

ZEESHAN HAIDER | RAWALPINDI, PAKISTAN - Sep 29 2008 15:16

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Militants battling Pakistani forces are getting weapons and reinforcements from Afghanistan, security officials said on Monday, vowing no let-up in their offensive in the north-west.

Government forces launched an offensive in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border in August after years of complaints from United States and Afghan officials that Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan were getting help from Pakistani border areas such as Bajaur.

Now the tables have turned and the militants locked in heavy fighting with Pakistani forces are getting help from the Afghan side of the border, officials said.

"The Pakistan-Afghan border is porous and is now causing trouble for us in Bajaur," a senior security source in the military told a news briefing.

"Now movement is taking place to Pakistan from Afghanistan," said the official, who along with a colleague at the briefing, declined to be identified.

The officials did not blame the Afghan government for sending militants across the border but called on Kabul and US-led forces in Afghanistan forces to stop the flow.

Bajaur is the smallest of Pakistan's seven so-called tribal agencies, semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun tribal regions.

US officials say Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked fighters, financed by drug money, use the tribal regions as an operating base to launch attacks into Afghanistan.

Pakistan has been under pressure from the US to block cross-border militant incursions into Afghanistan.

CONTINUES BELOW

But in a sign of growing frustration with Pakistan's efforts to stem the flow, US forces have carried out six cross-border missile strikes by pilotless drones and a commando raid on a border village this month.

The Pakistani offensive had made Bajaur a "centre of gravity" and "magnet", and even though up to 1 000 had been killed, the region was drawing militants from as far as Central Asia via Afghanistan, the officials said.

"Stop the reverse flow in Bajaur. It's coming. Heavy weapons are coming. The militants are coming ... they are crossing into our territory," a second Pakistani official said.

In the latest fighting in Bajaur, at least eight militants were killed in overnight clashes, a military official said. -- Reuters

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Pakistan: Militants crossing in from Afghanistan

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