A senior Pakistani provincial minister claims military has killed a top militants' commander during its ongoing offensives in the troubled northwestern Swat valley, Press TV.
The North West Frontier Province (NWFP) information minister Iftikhar Hussain said on Friday that the army had killed Mullah Fazlullah during an operation in the volatile valley.
The chief army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, while speaking to a Press TV correspondent said that he could neither confirm nor deny the death at this juncture.
Fazlullah was leading a violent campaign in Swat and its surrounding districts over some past months and was accused of waging a war against the state of Pakistan.
Fazlullah death can demoralize militants who are reportedly on the run across the valley.
However the militants' ominous campaign took a twist form bad to worse as militants have vowed to target civilians across the major cities in Pakistan.
At least thirty people were killed on Wednesday in a suicide car bombing that destroyed a police building in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
This is while four blasts on Thursday rocked northwestern Pakistan, killing at least sixteen people and injuring more than one hundred.
Also, the notorious militant leader, Baitullah Mehsud, has threatened to stage similar attacks in the capital and other cities across Punjab province.
"We politely ask the citizens of Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Multan to please evacuate their cities because we have marked out government targets there against whom we will carry out attacks as have never happened before," a Mehsud's deputy said on Thursday.
Chief army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, has said that Mingora, a main town in the Swat valley, will be cleared of militants in next 2-3 days.
UN officials in Islamabad have warned that a fund to help 2.4 million people displaced by the Swat conflict remained woefully short.
UN said it had received only 16 per cent of the $543 million international aid appeal they had made for the internally displaced people.
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