Uzbek al Qaeda militants and tribesmen fought pitched battles that left at least 46 people dead including four children, officials said on Tuesday. Heavy exchanges of rocket and mortar fire rang out for a second day around Kalusha town in South Waziristan, security officials said.
The fighting started after ex-Taliban commander Mullah Nazir, who backs President Pervez Musharraf's moves to expel foreign fighters from the troubled area, ordered followers of Uzbek militant Tahir Yuldashev to disarm.
Yuldashev, the head of a group called the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, was sentenced to death in absentia for bombings in the Uzbek capital Tashkent. Security officials say he had links to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. A mortar round hit a group of private school students who had been left outside the town by a bus driver because of the violence. Four were killed and 27 were wounded, the security officials said on condition of anonymity.
Thirty-three of Yuldashev's supporters were killed and 22 were detained, the officials said, while nine local tribesmen including some of Nazir's men also died, the officials said. Twelve seriously wounded civilians, all women and children, have been evacuated by helicopter to hospital in Peshawar, they said. Pakistan military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad earlier told AFP that he had reports that "around 30 people have been killed in clashes between local tribesmen and militants" but that the toll could rise.
Residents said tribesmen told the foreign insurgents late on Tuesday to lay down their arms by midnight or be killed, while announcements over mosque loudspeakers urged locals to be ready for more fighting.
Meanwhile hundreds of Uzbek militants and their supporters blocked the road from Wana to the town of Angoor Adda in order to "show their strength against their rivals," officials said. The local administration gave them a 48-hour ultimatum to end the blockade otherwise military action would be started against them, the officials said.
Arshad said the army did not intend to step in. The fighting ended a ceasefire negotiated about two weeks ago after 19 people died in fierce gunbattles between Yuldashev's supporters and tribesmen in the nearby town of Azam Warsak. Yuldashev and his men were among thousands of militants who fled the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 and sought shelter with ethnic Pashtun tribesmen in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt along the border. Officials said Yuldashev was injured during major battles with Pakistani forces in the Azam Warsak area in March 2004.
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