ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Pakistan on Saturday announced it was halting a major military campaign on its border with Afghanistan, launched after intense pressure from Western nations to combat Taliban rebels there.
The government said the decision was being taken in deference to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts next week, with operations to cease Sunday at midnight (1800 GMT).
Troops backed by helicopter gunships and heavy artillery have for weeks been pounding militant strongholds in the northwest, killing more than 560 people, according to officials.
The announcement came a day after Pakistan's army said it had killed 40 militants in an air strike that targeted a rebel stronghold in the troubled Swat region.
Interior ministry chief Rehman Malik told a news conference in the eastern city of Lahore that military operations were being stopped temporarily to allow civilians to observe the religious festival.
"I am suspending military operations in tribal areas in the northwest in deference to the holy month of Ramadan," he said, warning that the army will reserve the right to retaliate if attacked.
"It is not a ceasefire," he stressed, adding that "if they fire a single bullet we will respond with 10 bullets."
Pakistan's fragile coalition government, which pushed US ally Pervez Musharraf to resign as president on August 18 over impeachment threats, has been under heavy international pressure to combat militancy on the border.
But violence linked to the country's role in the "war on terror" has killed nearly 1,200 people in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan in the past year.
US forces say the border area is being used as a launching pad for rebel attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan.
Earlier Saturday, military spokesman Major Nasir Ali, quoting local sources, announced the numbers killed in the Swat operation, saying the toll included two senior commanders of top Taliban cleric Mullah Fazlullah.
Local officials said Fazlullah, who since 2007 has been leading a violent campaign to enforce hardline Islamic Sharia law in the area, escaped the attack by fighter jets but his group suffered massive damage.
In a separate incident Saturday, a missile apparently fired from Afghanistan killed five people in South Waziristan tribal district, also on the border.
A security official told AFP that the strike hit a suspected rebel hideout populated by "foreigners", a term officials use here to describe Al Qaeda fighters.
There has been a series of missile attacks on militants in Pakistan in recent weeks attributed to US-led coalition forces or CIA drones based in Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda chemical and biological weapons expert Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar was killed in a similar missile attack in July. The Egyptian, 54, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, had a five-million-dollar bounty on his head.
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