PESHAWAR: Awami National Party president Asfandyar Wali Khan has advised the federal government to hold ‘meaningful’ talks with Taliban insurgents to restore peace in the country and use force if the talks fail to produce desired results. The menace of militancy has eaten into the fabric of the society and, therefore, the federal government should take steps to eradicate terrorism. The ANP chief was speaking at a condolence reference for Bashir Ahmad Bilour, Kyhber Pakhtunkhwa’s recently slain senior minister, at Nishtar Hall here on Monday. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), home to terrorists, came under the jurisdiction of the federal government, which had the authority to negotiate with the Taliban, he said. Because the KP government had no role to play in Fata affairs, Mr Khan said, the federal government should work for an agreement for peace in tribal areas. Dawn, The Nation, Daily Times, Daily Mashriq.
MIRAMSHAH: Nine bullet-riddled bodies were found dumped in a deserted locality in Peer Kali of North Waziristan area on Monday. Local people said the bodies carried bullet marks and were found along the main Miramshah-Mirali road. A spokesman for Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, Ihsanullah Ihsan, said the victims were their associates and belonged to the Mehsud tribe of South Waziristan. He described the killing as extra-judicial and said the Taliban would take revenge soon. AFP adds: “Unidentified people threw away these nine bodies. No one knows who killed them,” a security official based in Miramshah said. Local people said the bodies had been discovered and a second security official said the identity of the dead was not known. The TTP spokesman told AFP that all nine were Taliban fighters and accused the government security forces of killing them. Dawn, The News, The Frontier Post, Daily Times.
BARA: Security forces in Bar Qambar Khel area of Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency have started collecting personal details of people living in the area. According to details, the security forces is planning to launch an offensive in Bara against militants and for that purpose it is gathering the information and total number of people living in Bar Qambar Khel so that they could be shifted to IDPs camps if the operation against the militants starts. The details sought by authorities also include the number of families and the total number of members of each family. The area is full of rumours and many think that the whole population will be shifted to Jalozai camp. The Frontier Post.
LANDI KOTAL: Fourteen people, women and children among them, were killed and four others injured when fighter planes bombed two houses in Tirah valley on Monday, sources said. Talking to Dawn, Ezatullah Humkhayal, a spokesman for a Tirah-based unspecified religious group, said that two planes bombed houses of Hunar Shah Malikdin Khel and Shah Pur Shalobar in Sarhokha area near Bagh Markaz at around 4am. He said the bombing killed nine members of the family of Hunar Shah and five relatives of Shah Pur. The dead included women and children. There was no official word about the air strikes and killings. Dawn, The News, The Frontier Post, Daily Times, Daily Mashriq.
LANDI KOTAL: A young man was killed when militants blew up a government primary school in Jamrud tehsil of Khyber Agency on Sunday night. Sources said that unidentified militants planted explosive material in the building of a primary school for girls in Bakarabad locality of Jamrud and detonated it with a remote control device at around midnight. They said that the explosion damaged a major portion of the school building. A young man identified as Akhtar Munir, who was asleep inside the building, was killed in the explosion, sources added. Dawn, The News, The Frontier Post, The Nation, Daily Times.
ISLAMABAD: Some 3,879 people, including 589 security forces’ personnel, lost their lives in the ongoing war on terror in Pakistan during the year 2012, data compiled by a research center shows. According to the Islamabad-based Conflict Monitoring Center’s annual report, one third of those killed in anti-state violence were civilians, while security forces lost 589 personnel. Terrorist outfits TTP and Al-Qaeda and Bloch rebels carried out 1,485 attacks during the year, while security forces conducted 570 operations against militants, which included 44 major and 285 minor operations in Fata and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The report also mentions that the security situation in the federal capital improved, but deteriorated along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border where Pakistan has faced hostilities from the Afghan National Army and Nato forces. The News.
PESHAWAR: The year 2012 in the country as usual witnessed a scenario of blood and fire. About 614 people had been killed in drone strikes and suicide attacks in Pakistan during the year 2012 while about 650 people sustained injuries while 13% of the injured had been facing serious physical impediments. According to the data collected during the year 2012, about 49 drone strikes, mostly in North Waziristan Agency had killed 248 people and left 50 people injured.
A total of 119 missiles had been fired in 49 drone strikes. The first drone attack of the year 2012 was carried out in Mirali on 10th January while the last drone strike was conducted on 28th of December in Data Khel which reportedly killed five people. The Frontier Post.
ISLAMABAD: The December 27 abduction and execution of 22 Levies personnel was carried out by Tariq Afridi Group of the Pakistani Taliban which was previously involved in the 2010 kidnapping of two former ISI officers, Colonel (R) Sultan Ameer Tarrar and Squadron Leader (R) Khalid Khawaja. Both the men were subsequently handed over to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, only to be executed in a horrific manner. The shooting of the abducted paramilitary soldiers came a day after the fugitive ameer of the TTP Hakimullah Mehsud said in a video message that the Pakistani Taliban were willing to negotiate a ceasefire deal with the government if it agrees to make Shariah the supreme law of the land besides severing all ties with the US. The News.
ISLAMABAD: The government has set another eight senior Taliban leaders free in two batches over the past few days, signalling its continued support for the Afghan reconciliation process. Those released are Mullah Noorudin Turabi, Mullah Allah Dad Akhund, Mullah Abdul Bari Akhund, Mullah Ghulam Mohammad, Mullah Daud Jan, Mir Ahmed Gul and relatively unknown Taliban figures Mullah Azam and Mullah Khair Mohammad. The first two served as ministers in the Taliban regime and four others were governors of different provinces. The releases take the number of the freed detainees to 26, an official told Dawn on Monday. They have been released since the visit of the Afghan High Peace Council’s delegation to Pakistan last month when the government agreed to free influential members of the militant group in its detention for assisting talks in Afghanistan on ending the war in the country. Following Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul’s visit on Nov 30, the government had agreed to let more Taliban detainees go back. Dawn, The News, The Frontier Post, The Nation, Daily Times, Daily Mashriq.
PESHAWAR: Thousands of internally displaced persons from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas have been spending nights at Jalozai camp, Nowshera district in darkness for one week due to suspension of electricity over non-payment of bills. Official sources told Dawn on Monday that the Peshawar Electric Supply Company had cut off power supply to the camp due to non-payment of Rs10 million electricity dues. They said Provincial Disaster Management Authority, which catered to provide facilities to IDPs, was unable to clear the Rs10 million outstanding power dues for November and December. Dawn.
PESHAWAR: A three-day anti-polio campaign was launched in Fata on Monday except Kurram, Orakzai and North Waziristan Agencies and FR Peshawar. The campaign in Kurram and Orakzai agencies will start from January 7, whereas due to law and order situation in FR Peshawar campaign has been postponed till further orders, according to a press release issued by the Expanded Programme for Immunization (EPI). Inauguration ceremony was held at the Fata Secretariat. Representatives from WHO and Unicef were also present on the occasion.
The number of children to be vaccinated in the campaign is 763,079. A total of 2,692 vaccinators would participate in the drive, working with mobile, transit and fixed teams. Dawn, The Frontier Post.
UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday he was “appalled by the escalating terrorist violence in Pakistan,” after 20 Shia pilgrims died in a car bomb and 21 kidnapped militiamen were killed. Mr Ban “condemns in particular the continued violent targeting of religious minorities,” according to a statement from his spokesman, Martin Nesirky. He also strongly condemned the killing of 22 members of a government-backed tribal police force kidnapped last week near Peshawar. “These cruel acts of violence cannot be justified by any cause or grievance,” the statement emphasised, saying the perpetrators “should be brought to justice”. Dawn.
PESHAWAR: Eight Levies men deployed at a check-post in Frontier Region Peshawar had only three rifles to counter any militant attack in the troubled semi-tribal region, a source told The News. The source said the soldiers had to vacate the Ghakhay Sar checkpost in Janakhor area on December 26 when it was stormed by the militants armed with automatic rifles and heavy weapons. The source said eight of the soldiers in the post had only three rifles and they had no other option but to save their lives. Militants also attacked other checkposts as well as the poorly guarded residential barracks of the Levies men located in a telephone exchange and in the newly constructed technical college. The News.
FRC REPORT
BANNU: TTP refuted the media reports here on Saturday that the group has been split into a few factions by releasing a video tape showing its central commander united and intact, FRC Filed Reporter learnt. The forty three minutes length video tape has shown TTP central command, HakeemUllah Mehsood, his naib, Wali-Ur-Rehman and the TTP spokesman Ehsan Ullah Ehsan. The TTP central command, Wali-Ur-Rehman and his deputy, declared that the media reports about the emergence of new factions inside the TTP are baseless and fraudulent. To a question regarding Afghanistan that whether it is fact that TTP is interested to fight in Afghanistan instead of Pakistan, Hakim Ullah replied that they are fighting in both the countries and will continue their fight against the secular governments of both the countries. In reply to a question that if Pakistan offers you table negotiation like America is in dialogue process with the Afghan Taliban, Hakim Ullah said, “If Pakistani government shows seriousness in negotiations with them then they are ready but the conditions laid down like disarmament before negotiation are unacceptable to us”. He termed the condition of disarmament ‘a joke with Taliban’.The central command also held the media reports based on lies which states that human power of TTP has been undermined with the passage of time and said that it has been increasing day by day. Talking about the Bashir Ahmad Bilor, Hakim Ullah said that he was very outspoken about the Taliban and said further that whoever, either politician or political party, goes against TTP he will be on their target-list.
NAWAF KHAN, SHARAFAT ALI CHAUDHARY
