Pakistan cracks down in Punjab after series of attacks
LAHORE: Pakistan will seek the help of a paramilitary border-security force to crack down on extremist militants in Punjab province, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ’s power base, after attacks that killed more than 100 people last week, a government spokesman said on Monday.
On Sunday, days after a suicide bomber killed 13 people in the Punjab city of Lahore, the provincial government said the security force, called the Rangers, would carry out “indiscriminate action” against all militants and their facilitators.
For the Rangers to conduct a full-scale operation in Punjab would represent the civilian government once again granting special powers to the military to fight extremist militants.
“Rangers-police joint operations will start in a week or two,” the Punjab government’s spokesman, Malik Muhammad Ahmad, told Reuters on Monday.