Militants pouring in from Afghanistan: Pakistan

By Zeeshan Haider

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Militants battling Pakistani forces are getting weapons and reinforcements from Afghanistan, security officials said on Monday, vowing no let-up in their offensive in the northwest.

Government forces launched an offensive in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border in August after years of complaints from U.S. and Afghan officials that Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan were getting help from Pakistani border areas such as Bajaur.

Now the tables have turned and the militants locked in heavy fighting with Pakistani forces are getting help from the Afghan side of the border, officials said.

"The Pakistan-Afghan border is porous and is now causing trouble for us in Bajaur," a senior security source in the military told a news briefing.

"Now movement is taking place to Pakistan from Afghanistan," said the official, who along with a colleague at the briefing, declined to be identified.

The officials did not blame the Afghan government for sending militants across the border but called on Kabul and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan forces to stop the flow.

Bajaur is the smallest of Pakistan's seven so-called tribal agencies, semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun tribal regions.

U.S. officials say Taliban and al Qaeda-linked fighters, financed by drug money, use the tribal regions as an operating base to launch attacks into Afghanistan.

Pakistan has been under pressure from the United States to block cross-border militant incursions into Afghanistan.

But in a sign of growing frustration with Pakistan's efforts to stem the flow, U.S. forces have carried out six cross-border missile strikes by pilotless drones and a commando raid on a border village this month.

The Pakistani offensive had made Bajaur a "center of gravity" and "magnet," and even though up to 1,000 had been killed, the region was drawing militants from as far as Central Asia via Afghanistan, the officials said.

"Stop the reverse flow in Bajaur. It's coming. Heavy weapons are coming. The militants are coming," a second Pakistani official said.

In the latest fighting, jets hit militant hideouts after the Taliban announced a ceasefire for the Muslim festival of Eid-al-Fitr, killing 10 militants, a paramilitary officer said.

REFUGEES IN AFGHANISTAN

The fighting has displaced several hundred thousand people and about 20,000 had sought refuge across the border in Afghanistan, the United Nations said.