ISLAMABAD - Suspected militants on a motorbike shot and killed a senior army officer and a soldier in the Pakistani capital Thursday, striking at security forces as the military continued a major anti-Taliban offensive in the northwest.
The assault in Islamabad showed that insurgents are able to hit the heart of the country despite increased security. In recent weeks, suicide bombings and raids involving teams of gunmen on a range of targets have killed more than 170 people across the country.
The offensive in South Waziristan is considered a critical test of nuclear-armed Pakistan's campaign against Islamist extremists aiming to overthrow the state and involved in attacks on Western forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Two gunmen Thursday fired on an army jeep in a residential area of the capital, police official Zaffar Abbas said. A soldier and a brigadier -- a high-ranking army officer -- were killed, while the driver was wounded, authorities said.
"Terrorists and extremists are behind this," Islamabad's top police officer, Syed Kalim Imam, told reporters.
The military is advancing on multiple fronts in South Waziristan, seen as a likely hiding place for al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. Over the past few days, they have been fighting for control of Kotkai, the hometown of Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud.
The fight for Kotkai is strategically important because it lies on the way to the major militant base of Sararogha.
An army statement Wednesday said forces were engaged in "intense encounters" in hills surrounding Kotkai and had secured an area to its east. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said there was no significant fighting inside the town yet.
The army believes Mehsud and his deputy, Qari Hussain, remain in the region directing militants' defences.
The statement Wednesday reported three more soldiers were killed, bringing the army's death toll to 16, while 15 more militants were slain, bringing their death toll to 105.
It is nearly impossible to independently verify information coming from South Waziristan because the army has closed off all roads to the region. Analysts say both sides have exaggerated successes and played down losses in the past.
The army has deployed some 30,000 troops to South Waziristan against about 12,000 Taliban militants, whose ranks include up to 1,500 foreign fighters, many of them Uzbeks.
More than 100,000 people have fled South Waziristan, including at least 32,000 people over the past week, the U.N. says.
Baton-wielding police beat back refugees crowding an aid distribution centre run by Pakistani authorities in Paharpur town, some 45 kilometres outside Dera Ismail Khan, a key town near the tribal region. The lines to the centre were long, and some refugees tried to climb the facility's boundary wall to get inside. Associated Press reporters saw an old man with a bloodied head.
"We came here for bread, but the police beat us up," said Rahmatullah Mehsud, one of the injured. "There, the Taliban were messing with things and the army was showering bombs. Here, we have to bear the clubs."
Aid administrator Javed Shaikh said there was plenty of food, but that the refugees were "impatient."
"There are some policemen deployed who are fed up with the indiscipline of the people," he said.
