36 Pakistani soldiers killed

In the Afghanistan attacked border checkpoints in Pakistan's north western Chitral District on Sunday at least 36 Pakistani security personnels were killed and dozens of others were injured in this attack when hundreds of Taliban insurgents attacked the border.

Since the US pulled out its troops from the eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban insurgents and the Hizb-i-Islami militia of former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hikmatyar re-established their bases in the two provinces.

According to the security officials, hudreds of militants attacked the Pakistan's paramilitary posts and civilian settlements in the areas of Chitral on Sunday.

Colonel Haroon Rasheed, Chitral's FC commandant said twenty six security officials and ten border police were killed. About a dozen of militants also lost their lives in the retaliatory attcaks. He said that the militants attacked the posts with heavy weapons while firing mortar bombs causing casualities.

However, there was no independent verification of the militants death toll. One of the official said that still clashes are going on between the security officials and militants in the border areas. Pakistani troops also blew up three bridges  on Saturday in the border region to halt the militants invasion.

Around 60 Pakistani soldiers were killed in the clash which took place on July when some 600 militants from Afghanistan attacked two Pakistani villages in the upper Dir region. Pakistani militants has largely relied on the campaign of suicide and bomb attacks but carrying out large scale attacks on government and their new strategy seems to be the army target.

During the last year, Afghan had claimed that Maulana Fazullah (mullah radio), who had escaped the military operation in Swat, had been killed in the attack between the security officials and the military officials in the Bar Mittal area of Nuristan.  

While the border attacks continued, gunmen kidnapped and killed a retired amry colonel on Saturday in the northwestern garrison city of Kohat. Police captured the gunmen in a car at a check point and later broke out a gunfight as a result of which one police officer lost his life. The abductors escaped and later shot dead Ahmad and abandoned his body alongside a road.

News Reported by AR for Newsvision newspaper