AFGHANISTAN: Afghans prepared to join border fight with Pakistan troops

Afghan defence ministry spokesman reports on border clashes between Afghan and Pakistani troops and says Afghan citizens are prepared to back their military forces. Thousands of Afghan civilians were prepared to join Afghan forces to fight Pakistani troops who on Sunday (May 13) took some areas in a border region, sparking the worst clash in decades between the two neighbours, an Afghan spokesman told reporters. Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan defence ministry, said Pakistani forces had penetrated several kilometres in some parts of a strategic area on the Afghan side of the Durand Line, dividing the two countries. Azimi said: "Today, Pakistani army forces were trying to station themselves in the Gove area of Zharai district of Paktia province, which resulted in opposition from the Afghan border police force in the area." The Afghan defence spokesman added: "The Pakistani army started firing heavy weapons and the border police reciprocated with light arms and the firefight is still going on. As a result of heavy weapons fired by Pakistan, so far two school students have been martyred and three others wounded. And two border police were wounded." Azimi said the fighting had raised nationalist fervour among Afghan civilians. Kabul said that it was keen to find a diplomatic solution for the clash the worst for decades between the two uneasy neighbours. When asked to comment about casualties on Afghan and Pakistani sides, Azimi said the only two deaths on the Afghan side were two school children and two wounded police. He did not know about casualties on the opposite side and said the exchange of fire started at seven a.m. local time. In Pakistan, military spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad said up to seven Afghan troops were killed in a border clash with Pakistani forces. Arshad said Afghan troops opened "unprovoked firing" on five or six border posts in the Kurram tribal region in northwest Pakistan. Pakistani paramilitary forces retaliated, he said. Relations between the neighbours have deteriorated sharply over the past 18 months, largely because Afghanistan has complained that Pakistan is not doing enough to stop Taliban insurgents operating from the Pakistani side of the disputed border. The clash comes two weeks after Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf met for the first time in months and agreed to step up security cooperation. Afghanistan says a resurgent Taliban are operating from Pakistani sanctuaries. Pakistan, the main backer of the Taliban before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, denies that and says the root of the Taliban problem is in Afghanistan. Stung by accusations it is not doing enough to stop the insurgents, Pakistan has begun building a fence along parts of the border to stop militant infiltration. But Afghanistan opposes fencing a border it has never recognised.

ITN Source | May 13, 2007

Tags:. .News Archive. .themselves. .worst. .district. .weapons