Zardari vows to fight Taliban 'until the end'

ISLAMABAD, June 13 (AFP) - President Asif Ali Zardari said today that Pakistan was battling for its “sovereignty” a day after scores of people were killed amid an escalating offensive against the Taliban.
Zardari said Pakistan would fight “until the end,” as US defence officials in Washington confirmed that Islamabad was stepping up its offensive against militants in the country's troubled northwest.

“We are fighting a war for our sovereignty,” Zardari said in a television address. “We will continue this war until the end, and we will win it at any cost.

“The Taliban are the enemies of innocent people. They want to terrorise the people and to take control of the country's institutions.”

Zardari's pledge came after suicide bombings targeting Friday prayers at two mosques killed at least six people, including a prominent Muslim cleric, and wounded more than 100.

The bombings confirmed fears that Taliban militants would avenge an offensive against them in the northwest, where the military said on Friday 39 insurgents and 10 soldiers had been killed in fresh fighting.

Religious scholar Sarfraz Naeemi, who had spoken out against Taliban suicide bombings, was among two people killed in one of the mosque attacks, in the eastern city of Lahore, police said. Lahore police chief Pervez Rathore said a suicide bomber had entered the room where Naeemi was sitting with others after Friday prayers, and blew himself up.

Naeemi had issued a fatwa (edict) against suicide bombings carried out by Taliban militants. Shops, offices, banks and schools in Karachi and Lahore, Pakistan's two largest cities, were closed Saturday in protest at Naeemi's killing, officials said.

In the other mosque attack, four people died and at least 105 were wounded when an explosives-filled car ploughed into a mosque in the northwestern garrison town of Nowshera, police said.

Meanwhile, security officials said that jets pounded militant hideouts in the Mohmand tribal district bordering Afghanistan, killing at least seven rebels. Jets also pounded the northwestern tribal districts of South and North Waziristan, they said.

Separately, a roadside bomb targeting a police vehicle in the northwestern garrison town of Kohat Saturday wounded at least six policemen and two civilians, senior police official Dilawar Khan Bangash told AFP.