ISLAMABAD - Pakistani jet fighters flattened at least three suspected Taliban training facilities in the volatile South Waziristan tribal region Friday, killing or wounding several insurgents, two senior intelligence officials said.
The Taliban also opened fire on troops elsewhere in the mountainous area, starting a gunbattle that lasted hours, said an intelligence official, without giving any further details. The fight marked the first ground fighting since the military started softening up the area with artillery several days ago in preparation for an expected offensive.
Other ground troops were moving into position around strongholds of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, said Nematullah Khan, a local government official in South Waziristan, where an armed forces buildup has been under way for several days.
The highly anticipated operation in South Waziristan is seen as a potential turning point in the yearslong and sometimes halfhearted fight against militancy in Pakistan. It could also help curb Taliban attacks on Western forces in Afghanistan.
The military says it is preparing a major offensive against Mehsud, but that it has not yet started in earnest.
For days, helicopter gunships, bombs and artillery have pounded suspected hide-outs for Mehsud and his fighters, and convoys of trucks have carried tanks and other heavy machinery into the area. Residents for weeks have been fleeing in the other direction in anticipation of an operation.
"Troops have entered in Mehsud's areas," Khan told The Associated Press on Friday.
Asked whether the jets, artillery and advancement of ground troops meant a full-scale operation had started, Khan said: "No, not exactly. These are attempts to soften targets before hitting them hard."
Friday's bombing runs were launched in response to reports of dozens of militants in the Zor Sorvakai, Madijan and Katkai areas, which are considered to be Mehsud's strongholds, said the intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.
They said it was unclear how many insurgents were killed or wounded in the attacks.
The troop deployment in many areas of South Waziristan had been completed, and soldiers were moving toward strategic areas where large numbers of Taliban fighters were believed to be entrenched, they said.
One of the officials said the military was blocking all roads that the militants could use to flee.
The South Waziristan operation comes on the heels of a similar offensive in the Swat Valley, but fighting in the lawless tribal region will likely be the toughest yet for Pakistan's military, testing both its combat capability and the government's will to see it through.
The Swat offensive is winding down, commanders say, with more than 1,300 militants and 100 soldiers killed.
A humanitarian crisis remains, with more than 2 million people displaced by the fighting and more than 230,000 of them living in refugee camps. International agencies say the emergency could become much worse if there is a further exodus from Waziristan.
Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar was cited by Dawn newspaper on Friday as saying that refugees would start returning to the Swat Valley on Saturday, but the military did not announce any new lifting of curfews imposed to keep people away from the fighting. Mukhtar could not immediately be reached for clarification.
Elsewhere in the troubled northwest, Taliban militants were blamed for bombing three schools in the Bajur area, where the military declared victory over the extremists in February. No casualties were reported.
Adalat Khan and Jamil Khan, who are both government officials in the area, said two boys' schools were blown up early Friday in villages northeast of Khar. A government college for boys was blown up in a town further north.
Jamil Khan said an improvised device planted alongside a road also exploded Friday, wounding a tribal police officer.
A bomb exploded Friday at a roadside restaurant near a bus stand in the remote southwest, wounding at least 12 people, said Naseebullah Khosa, a top government official in the region.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack in Dera Murad Jamali, a town about 240 miles (400 kilometers) east of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province. However, small nationalist parties have waged a low-scale insurgency in the province to get more wealth from natural resources such as gas and oil extracted from their areas. Authorities have blamed them for such attacks in the past.
