At least 10 people were killed on Monday
as pro-Taliban militants attacked the family residence of a member of
parliament in North-Western Frontier Province (NWFP), officials said, dpa reported.
Around 150 to 200 heavily armed insurgents surrounded the house of Waqar Ahmad
Khan in the Kabal area of the restive Swat valley and killed his brother Iqbal
Khan, two nephews and seven bodyguards, police said.
"They used rockets and bombs in the attacks," Swat police chief
Tanveerul Hassan told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The insurgents took the women and children out and demolished the house with
explosives. Waqar was not in the house when the attack took place.
A spokesman for radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah, who is leading an armed
struggle for the enforcement of Taliban rule in Swat, accepted responsibility
for the killings.
"This is our response to the mortar shelling by government forces in the
area," he told journalists by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Waqar is a member of the provincial assembly in NWFP and belongs to the liberal
and secular Awami National Party that leads the provincial government.
Party spokesman Zahid Khan condemned the militant raid. "This is an act
which stands in absolute violation of Islamic as well as local Pakhtun
traditions," he said.
A few hours after the attack the federal government in Islamabad banned
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the umbrella organization of several militant
groups, including that of Fazlullah.
"TTP has been declared as a terrorist organization," said Rehman
Malik, security adviser to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.
According to Malik, the law enforcement agencies were directed to take action
against those linked with the group, and various state-owned and private banks
will freeze its accounts.
TTP, which was created in 2007, has accepted responsibility for dozens of
suicide attacks, including the last week's twin bombings at a military-run arms
and ammunition factory that killed more than 80 civilian employees and wounded
about 100 others.
Baitullah Mehsud, who commands the organization from his stronghold in a tribal
district of South Waziristan bordering Afghanistan, is accused of ordering the
assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto in a gun-and-bomb suicide attack
on December 27, in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
But the left-wing party of the slain leader opened indirect peace talks with
TTP through tribal mediators after it took over in March, and the provincial
government in NWFP signed a peace accord with Fazlullah on May 21.
The move decreased the suicide bombings but created great concern in Washington
and Pakistan's other Western allies, which pressured Islamabad to halt peace
negotiations with the militants who are accused of launching cross-border
attacks on US-led forces in Afghanistan.
The indecisiveness on the part of the government whether to go ahead with the
peace talks or pull back and Taliban's impatience led to a deadlock, triggering
another spate of attacks.
Fazlullah called off the peace talks in June and accused the government of
delaying the implementation of the agreement, leading to the resumption of
government military operations in the scenic valley.
Three other smaller organizations - Lashkar-e-Islam, Ansarul Islam and
Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue - which are not affiliated with TTP
but share its philosophy, were also banned. All the three groups are active in
Khyber tribal district.
Some other Taliban groups which are not associated with any of the banned four
organizations are deemed as pro-government Taliban, which focus solely on
targeting NATO forces in Afghanistan.
...