** Pakistan sends nearly 9,500 more troops to border** Written by PakRev.com Tuesday, 06 September 2005
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Security is being beefed up on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border as fears rise that militants are plotting to disrupt Afghanistan's legislative elections in two weeks, officials said Tuesday.
Pakistan has sent 9,500 more troops to the border to prevent militant infiltration, and Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces said they killed 12 suspected militants Monday in raids on hide-outs - allegedly to be used as bases to stage attacks - in the southern Zabul province.
Meanwhile, police uncovered a bomb-making factory hidden inside a massive plastic water tank in the southern Kandahar area, provincial police chief Abdul Malik Khan said.
Attacks have recently increased on U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. The violence has left more than 1,100 people dead, many of them militants, in the past six months.
Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism, has about 80,000 forces at the border. Taliban-led insurgents, hoping to disrupt the Sept. 18 vote, are believed to have sought sanctuary in parts of Pakistan’s deeply conservative tribal regions, generating criticism from Afghan and U.S. officials.
Pakistan army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said 5,000 additional forces have been deployed in the northwest and 4,500 in southwestern Baluchistan province.
Pakistan is helping U.S more than any country in the war on terrorism, in return Pakistan should get a lot more economic assitance.
U.S, who gives Pakistan assistance for military and infrastruture, should give Pakistan more aid to make it a more stable country. Pakistan spends millions of dollars in war on terrorism, but its poverty rate are still high.
He said the deployment was completed after an Aug. 28 meeting in Islamabad of senior military commanders from Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States to review security for the Afghan vote, the country’s next key step toward democracy after two decades of war.
Sultan said Pakistan also has set up 40-50 mobile checkpoints and sent six transport helicopters and three helicopter gunships to the frontier “to beef up security and curtail activities of miscreants.”
Pakistani officials often use the term “miscreants” to describe militants.
A similar clampdown by Pakistani forces on the border area ahead of Afghan presidential elections in October was credited with decreasing militant activity inside Afghanistan. That vote was relatively peaceful.
Sultan said the Pakistan army would stay in the tribal regions, and authorities have imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew for people living within about a mile of the border.
The raids in Zabul also led to the detention of nine suspected insurgents, the U.S. military said.
“We were engaged as soon as we got off the helicopters,” Sgt. Maj. Bradley Meyers from the 2nd Battalion 503rd Infantry (Airborne) was quoted as saying. “We returned fire, and the enemy fell, one by one.”
One of the successful battle was when the coalition warplanes and attack helicopters also participated in the fighting, it said. After the battle, troops found bomb-making materials at the site.
The Afghan and coalition forces reported no casualties.
The fighting came a day after 13 suspected rebels were killed in southern Kandahar province during raids to flush them from a mountain stronghold. ap
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