PESHAWAR, Jan 17: Top militant commander Baitullah Mehsud on Wednesday vowed to avenge the Hamzola (earlier reported as Zamzola) air strike in the next two weeks in his native South Waziristan which, in his words, would cause pain to Pakistan.
Mr Mehsud did not exactly renounce his peace agreement with the government in February 2005, but said that the military action in Hamzola had forced him to take action.
“We will definitely avenge this action in 10 to 15 days,” the forty something militant commander told a foreign media organisation.
“And it (the action) would be such that it would pain their heart.”
Baitullah who according to security officials operated the cluster of compounds in Salamat village in Hamzola, 30 km to the east of Razmak, that received a hail of missiles from helicopter gunships on Tuesday, said he did not want to fight the Pakistan Army but had been forced to do so.
Asked whether his peace agreement with the government was over, Baitullah said it was up to Pakistan and Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan (the Director General ISPR).
“We don’t want to fight Pakistan. It is neither in our interests nor theirs’. The Americans want to pitch us against each other”, he said.
The commander denied that people killed in Tuesday’s air strike were militants. He said those killed were innocent children and workers.
He, however, admitted that militants killed in a Nato operation across the border in Paktika last week were his men.
“As far as Jihad is concerned, we will continue to wage it. We will do what is in the interest of Islam”, he declared.
He said Islam did not recognise any borders and for them Islam came first, before Pakistan.
In neighbouring Tank district, angry protesters held a demonstration for the second day running where speakers vowed to avenge the action in Hamzola.
Meanwhile, a senior security official said that the air strike killed at least 11 Al Qaida operatives, but any high-value target was not present there.
The official told Dawn that Tuesday’s missile attack at a cluster of compounds in Salamat village, 30km to the east of Razmak, had killed 11 militants of the Middle East origin.
This could not be independently verified and the official declined to say how he had arrived at the figure.
The Arabs were said to be among about 20 militants killed in the air strike, besides five Afghans and at least three local tribesmen.
“Some of the bodies are so badly mutilated that it is difficult to run a positive identity check on them,” the security official said.
He said that comrades of the five wounded militants had shifted them to a private medical clinic in Mirali, a sub-district in North Waziristan, for treatment.
The official believed that a few others might have been shifted to Spin Tanga in Janikhel area, where the now-dead Al Qaeda operative Hamza Rabia was once treated when wounded in an air strike last year.
But the official acknowledged that there was no indication that any high-value militant had been killed in the Hamzola attack.
“Those killed were mid-level foot soldiers. There is no indication that there was any high-value target there at the time of the strike", he said.
Meanwhile, while families and relatives held funerals to bury their dear ones killed in the air-strike, government officials were busy assessing the fallout of the attack that has caused strains on the February, 2005 agreement with militant commander, Baitullah Mehsud.
But one official quoting second hand sources said Mehsud had told his fighters to prepare for attacks on government installations.
There were no incidents involving militants and government forces on Tuesday night except for a bunch of militants stopping a paramilitary scouts caravan in Mehsud-dominated territory of South Waziristan.
In what appeared to be a related incident, suspected militants fired mortars at a security check post in Serwekai in South Waziristan but failed to cause any damage. There was no official word on the incident.
