Pakistan bombs Taliban in Waziristan

By Hafiz Wazir

WANA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani warplanes killed at least a dozen Taliban fighters Saturday, in a strike on their stronghold near the Afghan border, while police in the southern city of Karachi shot dead five militants.

U.S. officials have issued a steady stream of praise for Pakistan since the government first took the decision to go on the offensive against the militants over two months ago.

Operations in Swat and Buner, two valleys north of the capital of Islamabad, are in their final stages and the focus has switched to the stronghold of Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan, a remote tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

The air raid Saturday on Mehsud's mountainous redoubt was the latest in a series over recent weeks, and the government has already given orders for the military to mount an all-out assault.

The army is still assembling its forces in South Waziristan, and some diplomats expect some of the troops fighting in Swat to be moved there soon.

Mehsud is accused of a wave of suicide and bomb attacks, and while the body of his force has been focussed inwards against Pakistan, his men also cross into Afghanistan to join the insurgency led by Mullah Mohammad Omar.

U.S. President Barack Obama has put Afghanistan and Pakistan at the centre of his foreign policy agenda and has launched a strategy aimed at defeating al Qaeda and stabilising Afghanistan, where thousands of extra U.S. soldiers are arriving.

The latest encouragement for Pakistan was delivered by Obama's National Security Adviser Jim Jones, when he visited Islamabad this week on a trip that coincided with the Senate's approval for the tripling of aid to Pakistan to about $1.5 billion (900 million pounds) a year for five years.