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Pakistan close to capturing Swat militant leader

AP, Islamabad
Pakistan claimed yesterday to be close to capturing the leader of the Swat Valley Taliban after arresting five of his senior commanders last week.
Pakistan's army launched an offensive in April after militants seized control of much of the valley in the country's volatile northwest It claims to have cleared most of Swat and killed more than 1,800 insurgents, although sporadic militant attacks continue.
The army announced Friday the capture five top Swat Taliban commanders, including spokesman Muslim Khan its first direct success against the militant leadership.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said authorities were now closing in on Swat Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah.
"Fazlullah is surrounded, and he cannot escape us," Malik told reporters in Islamabad.
He said there were only one or two of the movement’s leadersnowleft.
Malik claimed, "Fazlullah is now irrelevant" as midlevel leaders under him had been either killed or arrested.
Yet militants remain active in the region. On Sunday, a suicide bomber attempted to attack a checkpoint close to a fuel station in SwaL Security forces
fired on his vehicle from a distance and it exploded, killing him, said Maj. Mohammad Mushtaq.
Elsewhere in the northwest, a bomb killed three paramilitary troops in the Khyber tribal region, where security forces have mounted an offensive to secure a major supply route for foreign forces in Afghanistan.
The bomb, detonated by remote control, targeted a security convoy in the Mandiknas area, said Sadiq Khan, a local official. T\vo soldiers died at the scene and four were wounded. One of the injured soldiers later died at a hospital.
Pakistan began its latest offensive in the Khyber tribal region on Sept 1 and says it has killed more than 150 militants. The fighting has caused thousands of residents to flee.
Militants have frequently attacked trucks traveling through the Khyber pass carrying supplies to Nato and US troops in landlocked Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, in the southwest a land mine explosion killed two women and two children from an influential ethnic Baluch family in the Dera Bugti area of Baluchistan province. The mine was planted just outside the door of Ahmed Ali Bugti's home.