Seeking Top Qaeda Figure, Pakistanis Battle Militants

Friday, March 19, 2004
By David Rohde & Carlotta Gall

New York Times Writers

David Rohde reported from Islamabad for this article, and Carlotta Gall from Kabul, Afghanistan

"The security forces will try to overcome them with minimum use of force. We would like to capture them without large-scale destruction, but we have the force available if need be."

Pakistani troops battled militants in and around Shin Warsak.

Image Credit: The New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- NYT
Thousands of Pakistani soldiers backed by artillery and helicopter gunships made limited progress on Friday advancing into a 10-square-mile pocket of farming villages where 300 to 600 suspected militants have been surrounded near the border with Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said.

Senior Pakistani officials said they continued to believe that a senior figure, possibly Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may be trapped with the group in the South Waziristan tribal area. But it appeared Friday that blasting the militants out of the fortified positions they have occupied in hundreds of fortresslike family compounds could take days, and dozens of lives.

Brig. Mehmood Shah, director of security in Pakistan's tribal areas, said that firing from the militants decreased somewhat on Friday, but suggested that they could be simply conserving ammunition. He said Pakistani paramilitary forces were advancing in two groups, from the east and west, house by house.

"They made little progress, they are still facing resistance," said Brigadier Shah, who described the Pakistani advance as "very slow." "I think it's going to take time. At least tomorrow, maybe more."

A Pakistani official said 17 Pakistani soldiers had been killed in fighting on Thursday and Friday, bringing the government death toll to at least 34 in four days. At least 20 militants died Tuesday, the first day of clashes, according to Pakistani officials. They have not given militant casualty figures since then, but said 18 militants had been detained Tuesday and 8 Friday.

Brigadier Shah said the largest number of militants were believed to be Uzbeks, followed by Chechens, Afghans allied with the hard-line Islamist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Arabs and ethnic Uighurs from Xinjiang Province in western China. He confirmed that Pakistani officials had received reports before the clashes that Dr. Zawahiri was moving through the region.

(More: NYTimes.com / International)

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Dan