Half-year curfew lifted in Pakistan's Swat

• Source: Global Times
• [01:44 November 20 2009]
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By Hao Zhou and Qiu Yongzheng in Mingora

A more than half-year-long curfew imposed by the regional government in the Swat Valley town of Mingora was officially removed Thursday as a result of improved security, a local military offi-cial said.

Major Mushtaq Khan, a spokesman for the Circuit House in Mingora, said, "The security situation here is getting better and better every day, so there is no need to protract the curfew any longer."

The curfew was imposed in Mingola, north of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, when Pakistan government troops launched offensives on the lawless area in May.

Although the once-dominating Taliban was wiped from Swat Valley by government forces months ago, reports said some of the Taliban militants who fled to the mountainous South Waziristan, where Pakistan military forces recently launched a new offensive, have reemerged in Swat Valley.

The founder of the Swat Taliban, Maulana Fazlullah, who had been allegedly killed in a Pakistan government operation in July, appeared again in Afghanistan and vowed to take "full-fledged revenge" against the army in Swat, according to a BBC report Tuesday.

At the security checkpoints at each end of the Ayub bridge, which links Mingora to the Kabbal and Matta regions in Swat Valley, more than 200 vehicles were waiting in line to be checked by heavily armed troops.

"The Ayub bridge, over the Swat River, was a major target of Taliban suicide bombings and has been blasted four times during the past year," said Lieutenant Farrukh, who heads a platoon de-fending the bridge.

In another development, a suicide bomber targeted a courthouse in Peshawar Thursday, killing 19 people in the sixth attack on the northwestern Pakistani city in 11 days.

Agencies contributed to this story