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| India-Pakistan |
| Kidnapped students rescued from Taliban captors |
| 2009-06-03 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] Scores of kidnapped Pakistani students and staff from a military-run college who were abducted by Taliban militants in the northwest of the country were rescued on Tuesday, a military spokesman said. The abduction took place on Monday as the Pakistani army pressed on with an offensive against the Taliban in the Swat valley, in another part of the northwest. The Taliban were taking the kidnapped students to South Waziristan when soldiers challenged them on a road and a clash erupted, said military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas. "Under cover of the firing the militants escaped and we have recovered them all," Abbas said. Abbas said 71 students and nine members of staff had been rescued. How... ummm... surprising. Tribal elders and government officials had been locked in talks overnight on efforts to secure the release of the students and staff. "We tried to secure the release through negotiation. After that, we were compelled to launch a military operation," said a senior military official in the NWFP provincial capital of Peshawar. Taliban fighters with hand grenades seized the students' convoy heading home for the summer holiday from the North Waziristan ethnic Pashtun region, on the Afghan border, to the town of Bannu, 240 km (150 miles) southwest of Islamabad. Bannu police chief Iqbal Marwat said on Monday that Taliban had seized up to 400 people in 28 vehicles. And all 71 of them were rescued. The vice principal of the college, Javed Alam, later told Reuters about 200 had managed to slip away and had arrived at Bannu. The surge of militant violence in Pakistan has alarmed the United States, which needs Pakistani action to help defeat al-Qaeda and get to grips with the Taliban insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan. There are several Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked groups based in North and South Waziristan in a loose alliance with the Taliban in Swat. South Waziristan is also the base of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. While the military has not announced any plans for an offensive after Swat is secured, officials said a South Waziristan operation looked likely. |
| Posted by:Fred |