Pakistan sends in elite units for house to house combat with Taliban

Telegraph:

Officials revealed on Sunday that elite commando troops had been dropped into parts of Mingora, the regional capital, to undertake advance combat, even as the army lifted a curfew to allow thousands of civilians to flee.

After three days of heavy fighting, thousands of people who had been besieged fled Mingora. They braved roads and terrain where the Taliban has laid mines, dug trenches and positioned gunmen in government buildings.

"We have prepared for house-to-house fighting but if the militants leave Mingora, then we will avoid it," said Maj Gen Athar Abbas, the army's chief spokesman.

He said that the security forces were heading from two directions towards Mingora and both forces would link up before assailing the city in force.

Thousands more terrified civilians, many on foot or donkey-pulled carts, streamed out of the valley during the curfew.

"Everybody wants to get out of this hell," said Zubair Khan, a resident of Mingora. "Some are driving out while many are just on foot. They don't know where they're heading but staying here just means death."

In Mardan, a nearby district of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), a government official said 100,000 displaced Pakistanis were expected to seek refuge alongside the 252,000 already there.

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They probably need to issue some cans of crazy strings to help detect trip wires in booby trapped homes. I suspect the Taliban will rig many of the houses to explode on entry. The troops should also consider the Israeli practice of breaking in through walls rather than entering through doors or windows.

This is the phase that could give great opportunity to the army if they set up effective blocking positions to cut off the Taliban routes of retreat.