PESHAWAR : Troops backed by tanks launched an offensive against militants near the Peshawar on Saturday, as the Baitullah Mehsud halted talks with the government.

Soldiers killed one militant and demolished a house belonging to the leader of an militant movement which has effectively taken control of the Khyber tribal district bordering Afghanistan and begun to threaten Peshawar itself.

The operation is the first by the government since it began talks with Taliban militants, although officials said the targeted rebel leader, Mangal Bagh, had no direct links to the Taliban.

“The ultimate goal is to restore the writ of the government,” the chief of the paramilitary Frontier Corps force, Mohammad Alam Khattak, told reporters in Peshawar.

“We have secured the heights and we have taken control of the area. A curfew was imposed this morning,” he said, adding that the operation was expected to last between five days and one week.

Television footage showed tanks and camouflaged armoured personnel carriers rumbling into the area, while officials said troops had fired several mortar rounds at militant hideouts.

“The security forces have demolished our commanders house and our main centre but we have decided not to fight them. We are not Taliban,” Commander Wahid, a spokesman of Lashkar-e-Islam, told AFP.

Resident Mohammad Kabir said the situation was tense in the area with large numbers of paramilitary troops patrolling the streets. “All markets are closed. All exit and entry points have been heavily manned by troops,” he told AFP.

Khattak would only say that the operation “is not against a particular group but against criminals. There was only one casualty when a militant was killed when he fired at security forces,” he said.

A spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Maulvi Omar, said it was not connected to Bagh. “We respect his commitment to Islamic law but we have no direct or indirect link with him,” he told AFP.

Separately top Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, accused by authorities of orchestrating the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, said he was halting talks with the authorities.

“We are suspending peace talks with the government because the government is constantly using force against us,” Mehsud told AFP by satellite telephone from his stronghold in the South Waziristan tribal district.

“The government is not showing any seriousness and is using force against us. But if the government takes any military action we are also ready for martyrdom,” he said. AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2008

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