Pakistan’s Taliban chief Fazlullah may be dead, says news portal
July 2nd, 2009 - 6:01 pm ICT by IANS
Islamabad, July 2 (IANS) Pakistan’s Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah may have been killed during an operation in the restive Swat Valley, a media report said Thursday.
The security forces had traced a phone call of Fazlullah, who was giving directions to his commanders for conducting more attacks, the News International qouted sources as saying.
Though the news portal said Fazlullah “may have been killed” in the Swat operation, it did not cite any officials or government sources to corroborate its claim.
The call indicated that the top militant commander was somewhere in Swat and the security forces targeted his satellite system.
In his phone tap, Fazlullah said he has a security forces’ siege all around him with nowhere to sneak out from, the report said.
The army has been battling the militants since April 26 after the Taliban reneged on a controversial peace deal with the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) government and instead moved south from their Swat headquarters and occupied Buner, which is just 100 km from Islamabad.
The operations had begun in Lower Dir, the home district of Taliban-backed radical cleric Sufi Mohammad, who had brokered the peace deal and who is the father-in-law of Swat Taliban commander Maulana Fazlullah. They later spread to Buner and Swat - and to South Waziristan earlier this month.
The military operations have displaced 3.8 million civilians from the three districts of NWFP.
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Tags: buner, civilians, frontier province, government sources, maulana fazlullah, militants, military operations, mohammad, north west frontier, pakistan, peace deal, phone call, phone tap, radical cleric, reneged, satellite system, security forces, south waziristan, swat valley, taliban
