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Missiles fired from what was believed to be an American drone struck a militant training camp in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people in an attack apparently aimed at one of the area's most important Taliban leaders, Hakimullah Mehsud, according to news reports, militants and an intelligence official. Mr. Mehsud escaped unhurt, the intelligence official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The attack was the first of its kind in the Orakzai region, which lies southwest of Peshawar and close to the border with Afghanistan, residents said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A suicide bomber on foot struck a police convoy about to head out on a poppy eradication mission in southern Afghanistan on Monday morning, killing 11 people and wounding 28, the police said. The attack was one of several in recent days connected to the overall battle against the Taliban insurgency backed by Al Qaeda. NATO and American troops are fighting the insurgency along the border with Pakistan and in the southern provinces near Kandahar, particularly Zabul and Helmand, the world's largest heroin-producing region. Drug profits fuel the insurgency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After a six-month campaign, the Pakistani military is claiming victory over the Taliban in Bajaur, a northern sliver of the tribal areas, saying the militants have suffered heavy losses and have been pushed over the border into Afghanistan. As evidence, the military this month showed off the once-busy, mile-long marketplace here, captured from the militants and pulverized to bits of concrete and mounds of dust. A tank was still parked in the remains of a shop. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- C.I.A.drones fired two missiles at militants in Pakistan's tribal areas on Wednesday, two days after Pakistan's spy chief threatened to curtail the drone strikes and demanded more information about the Central Intelligence Agency's operations there. The strikes drew a sharp rebuke from a Pakistani government that is increasingly public in its criticism of the C.I.A.'s covert role in its country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Eight militants, including an Egyptian allied with Al Qaeda, were killed Tuesday in what residents and a Pakistani security official said was a United States drone strike in the South Waziristan tribal area near this country's Afghan border. The United States has intensified its campaign of drone attacks against suspected militants in the border areas of Pakistan, but most have been concentrated in North Waziristan, an area that Western officials consider the most important refuge for militants with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A missile strike in North Waziristan killed at least 16 militants on Saturday as they were making plans to go fight NATO forces in Afghanistan, residents and an intelligence official said. They said a single missile, believed to have been fired from a drone aircraft, struck a government water-supply plant in the village of Haider Khel, near the town of Mir Ali, where the group was meeting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- At least five anti-Taliban political leaders have been killed in the Swat Valley in northern Pakistan over the past two weeks, residents there said, raising fears that the Taliban forces that once ruled the area could be regrouping. The pro-government leaders were killed in three separate attacks starting April 13, residents of the valley said in telephone interviews on Thursday. It was not clear who the killers were, but all the victims were people from the area who had been central to peace talks in the valley, the residents said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

MAKEEN, Pakistan -- From a forward base in the bare brown foothills of the soaring mountains of South Waziristan, Pakistani soldiers fired artillery at insurgents sheltering in scrub across the valley. Smoke blotted the sky as the soldiers set ablaze houses once used by the Taliban to hide caches of heavy weapons. In the Makeen bazaar, where the former leader of the Pakistani militants, Baitullah Mehsud, was once king, the army has flattened the jerry-built stores, including the ice cream parlor, scotching any idea of easy return. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pakistan moved thousands of troops into the militant stronghold of South Waziristan on Saturday, the army said, beginning a long-anticipated ground offensive against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in treacherous terrain that has stymied the army in the past. The operation is the most ambitious by the Pakistani Army against the militants, who have unleashed a torrent of attacks against top security installations in the last 10 days in anticipation of the military assault. The militants' targets included the army headquarters where planning for the new offensive had been under way for four months. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Even as hundreds of thousands of people stream back to the Swat Valley after months of fighting, one important group is conspicuously absent: the wealthy landowners who fled the Taliban in fear and are the economic pillar of the rural society. The reluctance of the landowners to return is a significant blow to the Pakistani military's campaign to restore Swat as a stable, prosperous part of Pakistan, and it presents a continuing opportunity for the Taliban to reshape the valley to their advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Initially, Buner was a hard place for the Taliban to crack. When they attacked a police station in the valley district last year, the resistance was fearless. Local people picked up rifles, pistols and daggers, hunted down the militants and killed six of them. But it was not to last. In short order this past week the Taliban captured Buner, a strategically vital district just 60 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. The militants flooded in by the hundreds, startling Pakistani and American officials with the speed of their advance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to a crowded Shiite mosque just south of the capital on Sunday, killing at least 26 people. It was the third suicide attack in Pakistan in 24 hours, in a sign that the Pakistani Taliban are overwhelming the nation's security forces. The assault south of the capital, Islamabad, appeared to be carefully planned. It took place in Chakwal, a town that has historically had strong ties to the Pakistani Army, and in a Shiite mosque. The Pakistani Taliban have increasingly attacked Shiite mosques. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A suicide bomber struck in an upper-class neighborhood of the capital on Saturday night, killing at least eight paramilitary security officers posted at a camp set up on a main road for the protection of the area's foreign diplomats and well-to-do residents. Also on Saturday, an American worker for the United Nations who was kidnapped near the Afghan border more than two months ago was freed, according to Jennifer Pagonis, a United Nations official. Ms. Pagonis said that the worker, John Solecki, had been released south of Quetta. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After agreeing to bury their differences and unite forces, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan have closed ranks with their Afghan comrades to ready a new offensive in Afghanistan as the United States prepares to send 17,000 more troops there this year. In interviews, several Taliban fighters based in the border region said preparations for the anticipated influx of American troops were already being made. A number of new, younger commanders have been preparing to step up a campaign of roadside bombings and suicide attacks to greet the Americans, the fighters said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two missiles believed to have been fired from an American drone killed seven foreign militants in Makeen, a town in south Waziristan, Pakistani intelligence officials said Wednesday. The attack, around 6:30 p.m., was directed at two vehicles of the type used by Taliban in the area. Makeen is the stronghold of the Mehsud tribe, led by Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban. Early Thursday, a similar missile strike killed at least four militants in the nearby Essokhel area, Agence France-Presse reported, quoting local officials. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A missile strike from a remotely piloted American aircraft hit the house of a local militant commander in the Frontier Region Bannu killing four people, including two Arabs, residents and intelligence officials said. The attack late Sunday targeted the compound of a local militant commander, Taj Ali Khan, in Sain Tanga village in the Jaani Khel frontier region of Bannu. Pakistan has six frontier regions that act as buffers between settled districts and tribal areas. Bannu borders North Waziristan. Five people were killed in the same area last November. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Three missiles thought to have been fired from remotely piloted American aircraft struck a Taliban training camp in northwestern Pakistan and killed 21 militants, according to a local government official and news reports on Friday. Fifteen other people were wounded in the strike, from about 9:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Thursday, on a training camp some 20 miles from Parachinar, the capital of the Kurram tribal area, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Taliban and the Pakistani Army signed a truce last month in Swat, the once popular tourist area just an hour north of the capital. But far from establishing peace, the pact seems to have allowed the Taliban free rein to expand their harsh religious rule. Just days after the truce was signed, a member of a prominent anti-Taliban family returned to his mountain village, having received assurances from the government that it was safe. He was promptly kidnapped by the Taliban, tortured and murdered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two missiles fired Sunday from American remotely piloted aircraft killed at least eight militants in a Taliban stronghold on the Afghan border, according to a local intelligence official and news reports. The attack, in the Sora Rogha area of South Waziristan, a tribal region controlled by the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, hit a militant base, the official said. The dead included four Arab militants, the intelligence official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The police on Friday blamed a suicide bomber for a powerful explosion that killed more than 30 people and wounded at least 50 in the Pakistani city of Dera Ismail Khan, according to residents and Pakistani television reports. The bombing, which targeted the funeral of a Shiite man who had been shot in the city a day earlier, set off a chain reaction of chaos in the city of about a million people on the edge of Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The government announced Monday that it would accept a system of Islamic law in the Swat valley and agreed to a truce, effectively conceding the area as a Taliban sanctuary and suspending a faltering effort by the army to crush the insurgents. The concessions to the militants, who now control about 70 percent of the region just 100 miles from the capital, were criticized by Pakistani analysts as a capitulation by a government desperate to stop Taliban abuses and a military embarrassed at losing ground after more than a year of intermittent fighting. About 3,000 Taliban militants have kept 12,000 government troops at bay and terrorized the local population with floggings and the burning of schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two missiles fired from American drone aircraft killed more than 30 people, including Qaeda and Taliban fighters, near the Pakistani border with Afghanistan on Saturday, according to a Pakistani intelligence official and residents of the area. The missiles struck three compounds, including one where the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, and foreign and local fighters loyal to him sometimes gather, the official and residents said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gunmen kidnapped an American who is a senior United Nations refugee official in Pakistan and killed his driver in the southwestern city of Quetta on Monday morning, United Nations officials said. In response, Pakistani security officials locked down routes leading out of the city. The American official, John Solecki, the head of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Quetta, was abducted about 8 a.m. as he and his driver, Syed Hashim, an 18-year employee of the agency, were on their way to the United Nations' local offices in Quetta. Mr. Hashim was shot and later died at a local hospital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Every night around 8 o'clock, the terrified residents of Swat, a lush and picturesque valley a hundred miles from three of Pakistan's most important cities, crowd around their radios. They know that failure to listen and learn might lead to a lashing -- or a beheading. Using a portable radio transmitter, a local Taliban leader, Shah Doran, on most nights outlines newly proscribed ''un-Islamic'' activities in Swat, like selling DVDs, watching cable television, singing and dancing, criticizing the Taliban, shaving beards and allowing girls to attend school. He also reveals names of people the Taliban have recently killed for violating their decrees -- and those they plan to kill. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hundreds of Taliban militants poured into northwestern Pakistan in a large frontal attack on a paramilitary base late Saturday and Sunday that left at least 40 militants and 6 Pakistani soldiers dead, according to Pakistani security officials. The attack, on an outpost of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force in the Mohmand district, appeared to be the heaviest assault on Pakistani troops in months. And in a reversal of usual patterns, it involved a large number of Taliban forces from Afghanistan attacking into Pakistan, signaling coordination among militants on both sides of the border. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Backed by helicopter gunships, tanks and artillery, Pakistani security forces on Tuesday shut down a crucial supply line for NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan as they launched an offensive against Taliban militants who dominate the Khyber Pass region. NATO uses the Khyber Pass, an ancient trade and military gateway that cuts through the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, to transport the majority of provisions for troops fighting the resilient Afghan insurgency. Supplies are ferried from Karachi in Pakistan 700 miles north to Peshawar, and then trucked 40 miles westward through the pass and into Afghanistan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Four months ago, the people of the Pakistani mountain village of Shalbandi gained national repute after a village posse hunted down and killed six Taliban fighters who had tied up and killed eight local policemen. The posse displayed the Taliban corpses like trophies for other residents to see, and the village was celebrated as a courageous sign that the Taliban could be repelled. On Sunday morning, the Taliban struck back. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A Japanese journalist and an Afghan colleague were shot and wounded in an attempted kidnapping in the northern city of Peshawar on Friday after conducting interviews with Taliban fighters in the nearby tribal region, the police and local journalists said. The attack comes amid a surge of violence by militants in Peshawar, including the assassination of an American aid worker on Wednesday, and the kidnapping of an Iranian diplomat on Thursday. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On a rainy Friday evening in early August, six Taliban fighters attacked a police post in a village in Buner, a quiet farming valley just outside Pakistan's lawless tribal region. The militants tied up eight policemen and lay them on the floor, and according to local accounts, the youngest member of the gang, a 14-year-old, shot the captives on orders from his boss. The fighters stole uniforms and weapons and fled into the mountains. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A suicide bomber detonated a vehicle laden with explosives during a meeting of elders in Pakistan's tribal territories on Friday, killing more than 40 people and wounding more than 100, according to a government official, television accounts and witnesses. Elders in the Orakzai tribal area, vowing to push Taliban extremists out of their area, were planning the details of how to wipe out a Taliban headquarters, said Kamran Zeb, the government's senior official in Orakzai. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using jet fighters and helicopter gunships, the government unleashed a more aggressive assault against the Taliban in Pakistan's tribal region this week, risking retaliation from the militants and the wrath of thousands of civilians who have been forced to flee their homes. The Taliban response was immediate and costly. A minibus carrying 18 members of the Pakistani Air Force was destroyed by a bomb on a major road in Peshawar on Tuesday morning, killing at least 13 people. The Taliban said the attack was in retaliation for the airstrikes on Monday. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the Taliban tightened their hold over newly won territory, Pakistani politicians and American officials on Thursday sharply questioned the government's willingness to deal with the insurgents and the Pakistani military's decision to remain on the sidelines. Some 400 to 500 insurgents consolidated control of their new prize, a strategic district called Buner, just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, setting up checkpoints and negotiating a truce similar to the one that allowed the Taliban to impose Islamic law in the neighboring Swat Valley. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article was reported by Sabrina Tavernise, Waqar Gillani and Salman Masood and written by Ms. Tavernise. MANAWAN, Pakistan -- The attackers hopped over a crumbling brick wall, wearing backpacks and belts with dangling grenades. They were young and wore beards, and by 7:30 a.m. on Monday, they were firing machine guns into an unarmed crowd of young police recruits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A suicide bomber attacked a crowded mosque in northwest Pakistan on Friday, setting off explosives as a cleric intoned the holy prayers, bringing the roof crashing down and killing scores of people in what was the bloodiest attack this year. The attack was unleashed in an area where there has been intense activity by Pakistani security forces aimed at protecting the critical Khyber Pass supply route for American forces in Afghanistan. Occurring only hours before President Obamaunveiled a new strategy against militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it raised questions about Pakistan's ability to counter the threat from Al Qaeda and the Taliban. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Suicide bombers who stormed the Justice Ministry and a prison department building in the Afghan capital last month were trained in Pakistan's lawless border region, Afghan intelligence officials have said. The attack on Feb. 11, which left 26 people dead and more than 50 wounded, was conducted by eight armed men wearing suicide vests, and has been compared to the militant attacks in Mumbai, India, in November and against the Sri Lankan cricket team in the Pakistani city of Lahore on March 3. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The United States and NATO are planning to open and expand supply lines through Central Asia to deliver fuel, food and other goods to a military mission in Afghanistan that is expected to grow by tens of thousands of troops in the months ahead, according to American and alliance diplomats and military officials. The plan to open new paths through Central Asia reflects an American-led effort to seek out a more reliable alternative to the route from Pakistan through the strategic Khyber Pass, which was closed by Pakistani security forces on Tuesday as they began an offensive against militants in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]