Pak Rangers to crack down on militants

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will seek the help of the Rangers, a paramilitary border security force, to crack down on 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 Punjabi city of Lahore, the provincial government said 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 Islamist militants.

“Rangers-police joint operations will start in a week or two,” the Punjab government’s spokesman, Malik Muhammad Ahmad, told Reuters on Monday.

It was unclear whether the new crackdown would target groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which are aligned against Pakistan’s archrival, India.

PAK AIR RAIDS KILL ‘DOZENS’ OF MILITANTS

Pakistani airstrikes killed “dozens” of militants on Monday in a tribal region along the Afghan border, the military said. The warplanes targeted militant hideouts in the Wucha Bibi area of North Waziristan.

Last week, Pakistan gave Afghanistan a list of 76 alleged Pakistani terrorists it said where sheltering there. On Monday, the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan handed Islamabad a list of 85 suspected terrorist leaders that Kabul says have found refuge in Pakistan. AGENCIES