Saturday, 25 Apr, 2009 | 11:04 AM PST |
Howevr, local Taliban members from Buner are still present in the area, Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said. — AP
PESHAWAR: Taliban militants have completed their pullout from Buner, a district just 60 miles from Islamabad, and troops have fanned out in their wake, a senior official said Saturday.
The Taliban's retreat to their stronghold in the Swat Valley brings some relief for Pakistani officials trying to salvage a controversial peace deal that halted nearly two years of bloody fighting in the northwestern region.
Militants from Swat seized Buner, a jumble of mountains and farmsteads on the west bank of the Indus River, after President Asif Ali Zardari earlier this month signed the peace pact for Malakand, which provides for the introduction of Islamic law in the region.
The Taliban began pulling out on Friday as officials issued increasingly loud threats of military action and Sufi Mohammad, who mediated the peace deal, intervened to defuse the tension.
Syed Mohammad Javed, the top government official in Malakand Division, which includes Swat and Buner, said Saturday that all the militants had crossed the mountains passes into Swat.
‘They all have gone back,’ Javed told The Associated Press. ‘No one is left in Buner.’
He also said that six platoons of paramilitary troops had deployed to police stations across Buner.
‘If police need their help, they will assist them in maintaining law and order,’ Javed said.
Javed said Sufi Mohammad had also given his assurance that militants would soon retreat to Swat from another neighbouring area, Shangla.
A senior police official in Buner, Rasheed Khan, said that around 300 Taliban left the region but that local Taliban elements remained in the area despite the deployment of Frontier Constabulary (FC) reinforcements.
‘There are some 250-300 troops deployed at different checkpoints in Buner,’ Khan told AFP.
The main Taliban spokesman in the area confirmed that all those who arrived in Buner from Swat had returned.
‘I do not know the exact number of my men who left the area but they all boarded in 15 vehicles to return to Swat,’ Muslim Khan said.
He also confirmed that local Taliban members from Buner are still present in the area but did not disclose their number.
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