Sunday, March 29, 2009

Taliban Abducts 12 Police in Pakistan

A sampling of what's going on in Pakistan-Afghanistan. Read how Radio Taliban communicates who it's going to kill. 
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) — Taliban militants abducted 12 police officers in a pre-dawn attack Sunday in a tribal region where a suicide attack on a mosque this week killed around 50 worshippers, officials said.
The insurgents surrounded a tribal police check post 35 kilometres southeast of Peshawar city in the lawless Khyber region before driving the captured officers away, local government official Rahat Gul said.
No one has claimed responsibility, but another official blamed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for the abduction.
The kidnapping came after Pakistani security forces on Saturday arrested four Taliban insurgents and destroyed two suspected compounds in the nearby town of Bara after Friday's bombing, one of the bloodiest recent attacks in Pakistan.
US officials say Pakistan's lawless tribal areas have become a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan and have regrouped to launch attacks on foreign troops across the border.
Obama said the Taliban have killed mostly Muslims. The Taliban are busy blowing up mosques:
Al Jazeera: Dozens of fighters have fired rockets at a transport terminal in northwest Pakistan used to ship supplies to Nato soldiers in neighbouring Afghanistan, police have said.

At least 12 shipping containers were damaged in the attack early on Saturday at the Farhad terminal in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, Zahur Khan, a local police official, said.

Police opened fire at the fighters but they managed to flee, he said.

Afghan-based US and Nato forces get up to 75 per cent of their supplies via routes that pass through Pakistan's Khyber tribal region and a southwestern Chaman border crossing - areas where Taliban fighters are believed to be operating.

Mosque bombing

The attack came less than a day after a suicide bomber blew up in a mosque in Jamrud in the nearby Khyber agency, killing 48 people and wounding scores more.

Pro-Taliban fighters were suspected of carrying out the attack to avenge recent military operations in the area aimed at protecting the Nato supply route, authorities said.