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Pakistan intensifies anti-Taliban offensive after school massacre

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Pakistani forces have intensified their offensive against Taliban fighters, killing 57 rebels in fresh airstrikes and moving ground troops deep into their strongholds, the military said Thursday. Fighter jets bombed 20 hideouts in Khyber tribal district, which borders Peshawar city, where Taliban fighters on Tuesday massacred 148 people, including 135 students at an army-run school, a military statement said.

Ground troops also moved deeper into Tirah valley, a mountainous stretch near the Afghan border where various militant groups linked with al-Qaeda have long established sanctuaries, the statement said. Separately, paramilitary Rangers killed five suspected Taliban members in a raid in the southern port city of Karachi, a spokesman for the force said.

In Peshawar, life slowly returned to normal after being largely shut down on Wednesday to mourn the victims of the deadliest attack in Pakistan during more than a decade of violence. In the capital Islamabad, political and military leaders opened deliberations to discuss what officials called a new plan of action to fight militancy.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed Wednesday to crush the Taliban with the full force of the state and immediately ended a six-year moratorium on executions for those convicted of terrorism. Thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets in all major cities to condemn the attack and to push the government for decisive action against militants. SAPA


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1 comment

  1. intensifies? my foot, they are partly the cause of the problem, they still supply saudis and gulf states with arms for the fsa alnusra isis isil together with usa eu turkish arms which finds its way to their clones in the taliban al qaeda islamic state etc

    blah blah blah are mostly misdirected, afghan taliban pakistan taliban, boko haram al qaeda al nusra etc etc, whats the difference? zilch zero eff all, the salafi saudi wahabi usa established financed supported etc taliban has been a blight for the better part of more than 25 years, their ideas of we are right the rest of you are "out of the fold" started mainly as proxies of the usa saudis gulf states against the then ussr and the "shia", leaders said nothing because it wasnt against "us" or "our folk", even when they started increasingly targeting sunnis the leaders kept mainly quiet, now it has reached unprecedented numbers they suddenly smell the coffee, first they have to accept they were wrong by supporting the other morphed clones of the taliban al qaeda fsa al nusra isis isil and now the inappropriately socalled islamic state…

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