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2 killed in joint US-Pak raids on Al Qaeda hideouts

K J M Varma in Islamabad

In the first ever joint operation by American and Pakistani forces inside Pakistan, two Al Qaeda extremists were killed and more than 50 others, including members of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, were arrested from their hideouts in Faisalabad and Lahore on Friday.

In a major policy shift, Pakistan permitted a contingent of heavily armed American "agents" to join its commando forces to raid a string of well-guarded houses in Faisalabad, Punjab, where suspected Al Qaeda operatives were hiding.

While two Arab nationals were killed in the raid, 50 others -- 42 Arabs, five Afghans and some Pakistanis -- belonging to the JeM and HuM were arrested, reports in the local media said on Saturday.

Several people were also arrested in simultaneous raids in Lahore on Friday night, the reports said.

Besides the heavily armed Americans, believed to be marines, and Pakistani police commandos, officers from intelligence agencies also took part in the raids. Three members of the Faisalabad police force were critically injured in the shootout that took place.

Intelligence about the suspected hideouts was provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which monitored the whole operation, the reports said. The FBI got the tip about the hideouts while investigating the recent attack on a church in Islamabad, in which five persons, including two kin of an American diplomat, were killed.

The US embassy declined to comment on the FBI's involvement in the operation.

According to the reports, the joint operation was approved at a top-level meeting in Islamabad and Lahore and the Pakistani interior ministry was not even formally informed, though that is the normal legal procedure.

PTI

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