Pakistan’s Zardari vows to fight Taliban ‘until the end’
President Asif Ali Zardari said Saturday that Pakistan was battling
for its “sovereignty” a day after scores of people were killed amid an
escalating offensive against the Taliban.
Zardari said Pakistan would fight “until the end,” as US defence
officials in Washington confirmed that Islamabad plans to step up its
offensive against militants in the country’s troubled northwest.“We are
fighting a war for our sovereignty,” Zardari said in a television
address. “We will continue this war until the end, and we will win it at
any cost.
“The Taliban are the enemies of innocent people. They want to
terrorise the people and to take control of the country’s
institutions.”Zardari’s pledge came after suicide bombings targeting
Friday prayers at two mosques killed at least six people, including a
prominent Muslim cleric, and wounded more than 100.
The bombings confirmed fears that Taliban militants are avenging an
offensive against them in the northwest, where the military said Friday
39 insurgents and 10 soldiers had been killed in fresh fighting.
Religious scholar Sarfraz Naeemi, who had spoken out against Taliban
suicide bombings, was among two people killed in one of the mosque
attacks, in the eastern city of Lahore, police said.Lahore police chief
Pervez Rathore said a suicide bomber had entered the room where Naeemi
was sitting with others after Friday prayers, and blew himself up.
Naeemi had issued a fatwa (edict) against suicide bombings carried
out by Taliban militants.In the other attack, four people died and at
least 105 were wounded when an explosives-filled car ploughed into a
mosque in the northwestern garrison town of Nowshera, police said.
The roof of the mosque caved in after the blast and a number of
people were trapped under the rubble, police official Imran Kishwar told
AFP, adding that the death toll could rise.
A spokesman for militant leader Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehreek-e-Taliban
Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the mosque attacks, and
Tuesday’s bombing of Peshawar’s Pearl Continental hotel that killed nine
people.
“Anyone who will oppose us to please the Americans will face the same
fate,” Maulvi Omar told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
-AFP
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