By DPA
Islamabad : Security forces and Islamic militants in Pakistan’s volatile north-western Valley of Swat Monday reached a ceasefire after three days of fierce fighting that left up to 95 people dead and scores wounded.
“The sides have agreed on truce and the firefights between them have stopped,” Inspector General Police North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) Mohammed Sharif Virk said.
Earlier, the militants’ spokesman Maulana Sirajuddin said Minister for Political Affairs Amir Muqam contacted them for the ceasefire and they agreed to it. “The two sides will exchange the bodies and move their injured to hospitals,” he added.
The truce came hours after paramilitary troops shelled the hideouts of the armed supporters of a radical cleric, Maulana Fazlullah, who has instigated Islamic rebellion through his illegal radio station in Swat, located some 160 km from NWFP’s capital, Peshawar.
Army spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said up to 60 insurgents were killed in Sunday’s ground assault supported by helicopter gunships.
“The terrorists have suffered massive casualties and their resistance has subsided,” he told DPA. However, the spokesman had no word on the losses of security personnel.
Local media and authorities in Swat said at least 11 law enforcers died in Sundays clashes when militants fired rockets and carried out several ambushes on police and paramilitaries.
The violence broke out on Friday morning after security forces laid siege to Fazlullah’s seminary in the village of Imam Dheri following the killing of 25 people, including 19 soldiers, in a suicide attack on a paramilitary truck.
The firebrand cleric declared holy war on the government troops after army commandos attacked radicals in Islamabad’s Red Mosque in July.
The rising militancy in Swat is evidence of the fast spread of the Taliban ideology into the settled area of NWFP from the bordering tribal region.
Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters have strongholds in the region, where they fled after US-led international forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001.