Pakistani Army kills 700 militants

Army attacks in the Swat valley, in north-west Pakistan, have killed up to 700 militants, according to the country’s interior minister. The claim comes amid growing US fears that al-Qaeda is moving to capitalise on Pakistan’s growing instability.

As government forces launched new air strikes in Swat, suicide bombers attacked a checkpoint near the main north-western city of Peshawar, killing 10 people and wounding more than a dozen. Interior minister Rehman Malik said the operation would continue until “the last” fighter had been ousted.

Officials said they feared as many as 1.3 million people, including 5,50,000 displaced by earlier fighting, could soon be homeless in the North-West Frontier province. Miles of traffic jams snaked out of the valley as tens of thousands of people escaped the fighting by all available means including donkey-drawn carts and rickshaws.

The fight is watched by the US, which fears al-Qaeda will try to profit from Pakistan’s turmoil. Intelligence officials say Taliban advances in Swat and Buner have helped Qaeda in its recruiting efforts aimed at young fighters across the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

“They smell blood, and they are intoxicated by the idea of a jihadist takeover in Pakistan,” Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst who led the Obama administration’s policy review of Pakistan and Afghanistan, told the New York Times.

The exodus from Swat added to a rapidly-growing humanitarian crisis. Officials in Mardan, on the lowland plains below Swat, said 2,50,000 people had registered for help – more than double the total on Friday.

The army said between 12,000 and 15,000 security forces were stationed in Swat, pitted against between 5,000 guerrillas, mostly in Mingora.