Pakistan deploys 9,500 troops at border
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-06 21:25

Pakistan has sent 9,500 more troops to the border with Afghanistan to prevent infiltration by militants intent on disrupting Afghan elections later this month, the army said Tuesday.

Taliban-led insurgents hoping to disrupt the Sept. 18 vote are believed to have sought sanctuary in some parts of Pakistan's deeply conservative tribal regions, drawing criticism from Afghan and U.S. officials.

Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the war on terror, now has about 80,000 forces at the border.

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said 5,000 additional forces have been deployed in the northwest and 4,500 in southwestern Baluchistan province.

The deployment was completed after an Aug. 28 meeting in Islamabad of senior military commanders from Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States to review security for the Afghan vote, the country's next key step toward democracy after two decades of war, he said.

Sultan said Pakistan has also set up between 40 and 50 mobile check posts and sent six transport helicopters and three helicopter gunships to the frontier "to beef up security and curtail activities of miscreants."

Pakistani officials often use the term "miscreants" to describe militants.

A similar clampdown by Pakistani forces on the border area ahead of Afghan presidential elections in October was credited with decreasing militant activity inside Afghanistan. That vote went relatively peacefully.

Sultan said the Pakistan army's Quick Action Force would stay in the tribal regions, and authorities have started imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew for people living within about a mile of the border.

A ban has also been imposed on carrying assault rifles, rocket launchers and heavy weapons in tribal regions, he said.

Attacks have increased against the U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. The violence has left more than more than 1,100 people dead in the past six months, many of them militants.

On Monday Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces killed 12 suspected militants in raids on their hide-outs in Zabul province in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Tuesday. The rebels were allegedly plotting to use the camps as staging bases for attacks aimed at disrupting the elections, the military said.

Nine suspected insurgents were also detained, it said.

"We were engaged as soon as we got off the helicopters," Sgt. Maj. Bradley Meyers, from the 2nd Battalion 503rd Infantry (Airborne), was quoted as saying. "We returned fire, and the enemy fell, one by one."

Coalition warplanes and attack helicopters also took part in the fighting, it said. After the battle, troops found various bomb-making materials at the site.

The Afghan and coalition forces suffered no casualties.

The fighting came a day after 13 suspected rebels were killed in southern Kandahar province during raids to flush them from a mountain stronghold.

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