A large contingent of terrorists attacked three security check posts of Pakistan along the Durand Line at crack on dawn on Saturday, leaving 25 security personnel and 20 intruders dead in the exchange of fire that followed.
According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), 200-300 terrorists from Kunar and Nooristan provinces of Afghanistan attacked seven Frontier Corps check posts in Chitral. Two border posts were over-run by the terrorists and reinforcements were sent there even as fighting went on for several hours.
The Army is working on the assumption that this attack was staged by terrorists from Swat, Dir and Bajaur with the help of Fazlullah and Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, who took refuge in Afghanistan following military operations in their native areas.
Through this summer, such border incursions from Afghanistan have become a new irritant in bilateral relations.
“The terrorists have organised themselves in Kunar and Nooristan provinces with the support of local Afghan authorities,” said an ISPR statement, adding that the scanty presence of NATO and Afghan National Army forces along the Durand Line allowed terrorists to use these areas as safe havens and mount attacks on Pakistani forces and isolated villages along the border.
Further, the Army pointed out that accurate intelligence about large concentration of terrorists from Pakistan and their local Afghan supporters in Kunar and Nooristan provinces had been shared with NATO and Afghan authorities but “no worthwhile action has been taken against the terrorists and attacks against Pakistani border posts have continued with impunity”.
