One paramilitary soldier was killed and another injured on Thursday when militants targeted a security checkpoint in Swat district, the military said. The rebels attacked a post jointly manned by local police and Frontier Corps troops in the Kabal area at around 2:30 am Wednesday, a security official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on condition of anonymity.
"The security forces suffered casualties when the militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade during the gunfight," the official said. There were no reports of any rebel being killed or injured in the crossfire. Violence swept through Swat when the military launched an offensive against the supporters of a local radical cleric, Maulana Fazlullah, late last year.
The full-fledged operation came after Fazlullah's men took control of key towns in Swat to enforce Islamic laws and established a parallel Islamic judicial system. They also intensified their attacks, including suicide bombings, on government troops to take revenge for the killing of more than 100 people, mostly militants, in a commando raid on Islamabad's Red Mosque in July 2007.
However, top commander of Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, pulled out of the negotiations on April 28 after the government refused to withdraw army personnel from the conflict-hit Waziristan district and to remove security checkpoints. Pakistan has deployed around 100,000 soldiers in the rugged region to clamp down on the pro-Taliban fighters and prevent their cross-border attacks.