And if you think I'm believing a racist, agenda-pushing, Muslim-hating, Zionist-controlled War Daily account, well, you are new to the blog.
"Militants abduct 25 Pakistani officers; Violence teems in borderlands" by Stephen Graham, Associated Press | July 30, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Islamic militants seized a security post in the country's troubled northwest yesterday, capturing at least 25 police and soldiers in a raid that underscored the government's weak grip on territory near the Afghan border.
Extremists also killed two security officers elsewhere in the Swat Valley, a day after three intelligence agents died in an ambush in the same area in further blows to the hopes of Pakistani leaders that they can tame Islamic hard-liners through peace negotiations.
Pakistani officials said the security force was manning a post near Deolai village in Swat when it was surrounded by an unknown number of militants yesterday morning. Police said about 30 officers and paramilitary troops were abducted, while an army statement put the number at "as many as 25."
"All personnel manning the post were taken hostage and shifted to some unknown location," the army's statements said. The army reported that "miscreants" killed two security force members and wounded 14 as they went to remove a militant checkpoint in another area of the valley where ambushers killed three intelligence officers on Monday.
Security forces struck back, killing two militants and capturing six in an operation yesterday, officials said. The military blamed the flare-up on followers of Mullah Fazlullah, a pro-Taliban cleric who last year took control of large tracts of Swat until an army operation drove his fighters out.
A spokesman for Fazlullah, Bakht Ali Khan, claimed responsibility for both the kidnapping at the security post and the ambushing of the intelligence agents. He said the government was not sticking to the terms of a peace accord struck two months ago, accusing security forces of torturing suspected militants.
"The government is not honoring the peace agreement with Taliban and the government will be responsible for any consequences," Khan said. "We will take revenge for any action against us."
Swat lies in a swath of northwestern Pakistan that has increasingly come under the sway of Islamic militants opposed to Pakistan's alliance with Washington in the war with terrorist groups. Al Qaeda operatives and Taliban fighters from Afghanistan also are active in the region.
The government's strategy of offering peace to Pakistani militants who renounce violence in an effort to isolate hard-liners has yet to bear fruit."And CUI BONO, 'eh?