PESHAWAR, Pakistan--Pakistani paramilitary forces pushed fighters belonging to an Islamic militant group farther from Peshawar on Sunday and destroyed unoccupied bases and houses belonging to members of the group. But the militants’ leader appeared to remain unscathed.

The leader, Mangal Bagh, was in Tirra Valley on Sunday, about 100 miles west of Bara in Khyber agency, where various houses and bases of the group were blown up by Pakistani security forces, residents of Bara said in telephone interviews.

Mr. Mangal Bagh’s fighters, operating out of Khyber agency, which is adjacent to Peshawar, have been kidnapping residents and threatening the city over the last two months.In a sign of conciliation, Mr. Mangal Bagh, a former bus cleaner and bodyguard who rose in the last three years to become the head of Lashkar-i-Islam, or the Army of Islam, said in a telephone interview with a Pakistani national newspaper, The News, that he had told his volunteers not to resist the Pakistani forces. He said he them considered brothers.

Residents of Bara said he appeared to be more preoccupied with fighting a rival group, Ansar-ul-Islam, headed by Qazi Mehboob, in the Tirra Valley, where Mr. Mangal Bagh’s forces were suffering substantial losses.

The senior official in the Pakistani Interior Ministry, Rehman Malik, said Sunday that the operations by the regional security force, known as the Frontier Corps, had been successful and he declared Peshawar “safe and peaceful.”

But none of Mr. Mengal Bahr’s heavily armed fighters were reported killed in the action. Television crews that accompanied the Frontier Corps on Sunday as they set about destroying houses in Bara belonging to more than 20 commanders of the Army of Islam said the buildings had all been vacated.

The Pakistani Army, which keeps 60,000 men in Peshawar, was not involved in the operation, an army spokesman said.

Despite its policy of negotiating with militant Islamic groups rather than using military force, the civilian government formed after elections in February ordered the action on Saturday against the Army of Islam and other militant groups in Khyber agency, which is part of Pakistan’s lawless tribal area.

The groups have been steadily squeezing Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province, abducting residents for high ransom and setting up committees of justice in nearby towns to replace the courts. They have been hijacking trucks with supplies for NATO and American soldiers in Afghanistan that travel from the port of Karachi along a road through Khyber agency, not far from Peshawar. (Source: The Washington Post)

Story Date: June 30, 2008