Pakistan dispatched 30,000 troops into battle on October 17, vowing to crush the Tehreek-e-Taliban network and blaming the faction for some of the deadliest bomb attacks that have killed more than 2,500 people in 28 months.

The offensive has been welcomed by the United States, which has dubbed Waziristan and the rest of Pakistan's tribal belt on the Afghan border the most dangerous place on Earth where Al-Qaeda are plotting attacks on the West.

Military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told reporters flown by the army to the former rebel bastion of Sararogha that the army had captured most of the population centres and disrupted the militants' food supply line.

"The myth has been broken that this was a graveyard for empires and it would be a graveyard for the army," Abbas said.

"Major town and population centres have been secured," he added.

In Sararogha, which was previously home to around 10,000 people and is surrounded by hills, streets were destroyed, the market reduced to rubble and no civilians in sight, said an AFP reporter.

Commanders said troops were locked in fighting Tuesday at Janata, about six kilometres (four miles) north of Sararogha, which they described as a former bastion of Uzbek and Arab fighters.

Overall, 550 militants and 70 soldiers have been killed since the army launched the offensive on October 17, Abbas said.

The army provides the only regular information from the frontlines. Few of the details can be verified because communication lines are down and journalists and aid workers barred from independent access to the area.

Pakistan estimated 10,000 Tehreek-e-Taliban footsoldiers were holed up in South Waziristan. Although there have been pockets of stiff resistance, many of the militants are believed to have escaped into neighbouring districts.

The South Waziristan offensive has displaced more than 250,000 people, according to the army, and the United Nations has urged Pakistan to ensure safety and security of civilians during the operation.

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The deadly assaults on Pakistan's police and intelligence agents come with 30,000 troops pressing their most ambitious offensive to date against homegrown Taliban networks in their mountain strongholds on the Afghan border.

The three-storey Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) provincial headquarters in the northwestern city of Peshawar was heavily damaged, with huge clouds of smoke spewing into the sky and debris littering the ground, witnesses said.

The front and middle of the building collapsed, and five bodies lay on the road in the minutes after the attack, said an AFP reporter in Peshawar, which runs into Pakistan's lawless tribal belt infested with Al-Qaeda and Taliban.

"I was busy at work then suddenly I heard gunfire. I saw a vehicle moving towards the ISI building and then there was a huge blast. I was thrown to the ground," Azmat Ali, a 30-year-old mechanic told AFP in hospital.

"I don't remember anything else, but there was dust everywhere," he added after being treated for a broken shoulder.

The United States has put Pakistan on the frontline of its war against Al-Qaeda and has been increasingly disturbed by deteriorating security in the country where attacks and bombings have killed about 2,500 people in 28 months.

Security officials, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media, said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber driving a vehicle packed with explosives.

"A car came from the wrong side of the road and as security force personnel fired at it to stop it, the driver exploded the vehicle," one official said.

"Eight people have died and more than 30 are injured," Sahib Zada Anis, head of the northwestern city's administration, told AFP.

A second suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a suburban police station in the garrison city of Bannu, southwest of Peshawar, killing three policemen and wounding five others, police said.

"The bomber rammed the car into the police station," Bannu police chief Iqbal Marwat told AFP from the garrison town.

"There are three policemen dead and 12 injured. The number of casualties is likely to rise because the injured are being pulled out from the rubble of the police station," he added.

Peshawar, which borders Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt where US officials say Al-Qaeda are plotting attacks on the West and where Pakistani troops are pressing a major offensive, is frequently hit by attacks.

The most devastating bomb attack in Pakistan in two years killed at least 118 people in a crowded Peshawar market on October 28 as militants put ordinary civilians firmly in the crosshairs of their bloody campaign.

Pakistan's powerful and shadowy intelligence agencies have a history of supporting Islamist groups in a bid to counter rival India, but militant attacks have increasingly focused on domestic targets in the last two years.

Friday's bombing in Peshawar was the first major attack outside an ISI installation since May, when a suicide attack on a police building in the city of Lahore killed 24 people beside its Punjab provincial headquarters.

The government blames increasing attacks on Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is the target of the ongoing offensive and which wants to avenge the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud by a US missile in August.

The latest attacks came after stiff Taliban resistance killed at least 17 Pakistani soldiers Thursday in the military's deadliest day since launching a major offensive in South Waziristan, security officials said.

Pakistan has pressed around 30,000 forces, backed by war planes and attack helicopters, into battle in a US-endorsed mission to wipe out the chief strongholds of Tehreek-e-Taliban in the tribal district of South Waziristan.

On Tuesday, a Taliban spokesman told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location that the militia had embarked on a guerrilla war from the mountains of South Waziristan and would attack cities as a matter of course.

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A senior military official told AFP the army had "taken" the strategic town of Sararogha in the third week of fighting, while 30 Islamist insurgents were reported killed in the last 24 hours.

Pakistan has vowed to quash Tehreek-e-Taliban in South Waziristan, part of the border area with Afghanistan that Washington calls the most dangerous place in the world because of the abundance of Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Sararogha shot to infamy within the tribal belt as the operational centre of former Tehreek-e-Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a US drone attack in August.

The military provides the only regular information coming from the frontlines. None of the details can be verified because communication lines are down and journalists and aid workers barred from the area.

Pakistan launched its fierce air and ground offensive into the northwest region on October 17, with some 30,000 troops backed by fighters jets and helicopter gunships laying siege to Tehreek-e-Taliban bolt-holes.

"Today, security forces entered into the important stronghold of terrorists, the town of Ladha. Intense fighting is taking place in (the) streets," the military said in its daily update.

It said "security forces have cleared a major part" of Sararogha, but a senior official in northwest Pakistan said the town had been captured.

So far, the military has claimed to have killed more than 390 militants since the operation began, with 45 troops losing their lives.

The long-anticipated assault into South Waziristan came after a spring offensive in and around the northwestern Swat valley, which the government declared a success in July. However, sporadic outbreaks of violence continue.

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"At this stage we have six UN staff killed in this incident," said Adrian Edwards, confirming that all were international staff.

"We have nine injured, some of them seriously," he said.

He was unable to confirm the nationalities of the casualties.

Investigations were underway at the site of the siege, near Kabul's busy Butcher Street area, to find out if other UN staffers were involved, he said.

The UN-approved Bekhtar Guesthouse was attacked at about 6:30 am (0100 GMT) by three armed gunmen wearing explosives-packed vests, Afghan interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashery said.

The dead were killed during the police operation, in which the attackers were shot dead around 8:30 am, he said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it is the first step in a campaign against the upcoming run-off in the presidential elections. Related article: Doubts over Afghan run-off.

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The blast ripped through a busy main road during the morning rush hour in the town of Kamra, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of the capital Islamabad near the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC), police said.

"It was a suicide attack that killed six people including four civilians and two Pakistan Air Force personnel," said district police chief Fakhar Sultan.

The Air Force said 15 security personnel were admitted to hospital with injuries and confirmed that two of its personnel died when the bomber blew himself up at the checkpoint on the main road outside the base.

"We have found a mutilated face, as well as other body parts, including legs and arms of the bomber," said Sultan.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but a series of attacks blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked extremists has left more than 190 dead this month in the frontline state in the US-led battle with global extremism.

The military has been a major target. On Thursday, gunmen killed a brigadier, who had been working in a UN peace mission in Sudan, with his driver in Islamabad.

On October 10 militants staged an audacious ambush claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) movement on the army headquarters in Rawalpindi.

Pakistan has vowed to crush the network, unleashing a major ground and air offensive targeting TTP in their South Waziristan stronghold along the Afghan border, where Al-Qaeda is accused of plotting attacks on the West.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the Kamra attack and vowed that the government would not waver in its resolve to "root out terrorism" with nearly 30,000 troops fighting against the TTP in South Waziristan.

Tensions have soared in Pakistan, with civilians increasingly nervous of extremist bombings and millions of students kept at home this week as Pakistan shut all schools and colleges after a suicide attack Tuesday at a university.

The Waziristan offensive presents Pakistan with its toughest fight to date against Islamist radicals accused of plotting attacks on the West and blamed for attacks that have killed 2,280 people in Pakistan in two years.

Officials say more than 150 people, at least 137 militants and 18 soldiers, have been killed since the operation against an estimated 10,000 fighters began Saturday and more than 120,000 civilians have fled the war zone.

Backed by helicopter gunships and warplanes, troops have been locked in heavy fighting that underscores the difficulty of dislodging diehard Taliban from bastions such as Kotkai, the hometown of TTP chief Hakimullah Mehsud.

Washington has encouraged the offensive but US lawmakers passed a giant Pentagon spending bill that sets tough new restrictions on military aid to Pakistan, where army commanders are already fuming over previous limits.

The bill says the Pentagon must certify that Islamabad is waging a "concerted" fight against Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other fighters before it can receive the massive package of aid to battle extremists on its soil.

"That fight is important to our own national security and we have to ensure that our support for it is not being squandered or diverted," said Senator Robert Menendez, a key author of the measure.

US lawmakers have increasingly called for closer tracking of US aid to Pakistan, amid growing concerns about US strategy in Afghanistan as Obama weighs sending more troops to fight the eight-year-old war.

But the vote could worsen a flare-up between Washington and Islamabad about strings attached to US dollars, military training and hardware, with Pakistani officials bitterly complaining of US interference in domestic affairs.

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The army said 78 militants had been killed in the operation which presents the military with its biggest challenge yet in the war against the hardliners who have been blamed for a wave of attacks killing 2,250 people in two years.

But concerns are mounting that the assault in South Waziristan will spark another refugee crisis ahead of heavy snow in a bitterly cold winter.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Pakistan was determined to deliver a "decisive blow" against the Taliban in the tribal district, as troops advanced towards diehard militant bastions along heavily mined roads.

Ground forces have massed on the western, eastern and northwestern flanks of Kotkai, the hometown of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Hakimullah Mehsud and key Taliban leader Qari Hussain, readying for an assault.

"The high-level targets are the leadership. We hope to get the leadership," said Major General Athar Abbas, the army's chief spokesman.

"The forces have taken over the heights, features around Kotkai. Kotkai is the home town of Qari Hussain, formerly known as the mentor of suicide bombers," said Abbas, referring to "stiff resistance" at Sherwangi.

Troops could capture Kotkai by Tuesday, a military official told AFP.

The insurgents have mined roads with improvised-explosive devices (IEDs) of the type deployed to devastating effect against NATO and US troops fighting an eight-year war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the official said.

Hoping to sow division, the military airdropped leaflets urging Mehsud's own tribe to rise up and fight alongside the army.

"The aim of the army is to provide an opportunity to the Mehsud tribe to live in peace and tranquility," said the flyers.

The United States has long pressed for military action against Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants, following a prolonged assault in the northwest Swat Valley -- considered a less difficult fight than Waziristan.

Gilani urged the international community to provide reconstruction and relief aid at talks with US General David Petraeus and US Senator John Kerry.

Petraeus, overall commander of the US military operation in Afghanistan, said Washington "acknowledges the sacrifices of Pakistan in the war on terror".

The secretary general of NATO, which has around 67,700 troops in Afghanistan, also expressed "appreciation of the increased efforts... in the border regions" by the Pakistan authorities.

"It is crucial for stability in the whole region that the Pakistani government and military succeed in their endeavours," Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. Related article: Factfile on South Waziristan

Pakistan says its offensive is concentrated against up to 10,000 fighters spread across about half of South Waziristan.

Some 25,000 troops are involved in the three-pronged push against militant networks blamed for some of the worst attacks in Pakistan, where a recent spike in assaults has left more than 170 people dead so far this month.

The military said nine soldiers and 78 militants have been killed so far in South Waziristan, part of the anarchic tribal belt on the Afghan border.

It is impossible to corroborate information from within South Waziristan. The military has sealed off exit and entry points, imposed curfews and jammed phone lines.

Some of the 100,000 people who have fled to neighbouring Dera Ismail Khan, on foot and stuffed into pick-up trucks weighed down with bedding and animals, spoke of intensifying fighting and air strikes targeting villages.

"I decided to leave when my neighbour's house was destroyed by jet fighters," said Rahim Dad Mehsud, a labourer from Tiarza who said he walked three days to leave South Waziristan with 12 relatives.

Mehsud, who comes from the same tribe as the TTP leader, said ordinary civilians were the victims of a doomed operation.

"The Taliban cannot be eliminated through a military operation. Both are killing us," he said.

Some of the displaced civilians accused the authorities of maltreating those from the tribal belt, which has a fierce tradition of independence.

Numerous previous offensives in the tribal belt have had limited success, costing the lives of 2,000 troops and ending generally with peace agreements that critics say simply gave the militants a chance to re-arm.

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In an interview published in the weekly magazine Open, Mupalla Laxman Rao, better known as Ganapathi, said any offensive might secure some early gains but insisted that the rebels would eventually triumph.

"Although the enemy may achieve a few successes in the initial phase, we shall certainly overcome and defeat the government offensive," Ganapathi was quoted as saying in the magazine's latest edition.

Open said the interview was conducted at an undisclosed jungle location in eastern India, part of a vast, Maoist-affected region known as the "red corridor".

The corridor includes areas of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal states, and runs south through Orissa, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

The states' police and paramilitary forces will be in the frontline of the planned anti-rebel offensive, which official sources say is likely to begin in November and involve hundreds of thousands of security personnel.

Ganapathi, a 59-year-old former school teacher, said the operation would provoke a mass response.

"People will rise up like a tornado under our party's leadership to wipe out the reactionary blood-sucking vampires ruling our country," he said, branding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P. Chidambaram "terrorists".

Singh has described the Maoist insurgency, which began as a peasant uprising in 1967, as the single greatest threat to India's internal security.

The Maoists say they are fighting for the rights of the rural poor and local tribes, but officials accuse them of using intimidation and extortion to collect money and to control impoverished villagers.

"This region is the wealthiest as well as the most underdeveloped part of our country," said Ganapathi, who is one of the most wanted men in India and is known to change his location frequently.

"These (government) sharks want to loot the wealth and drive the tribal people of the region to further impoverishment," he said.

Maoist-linked violence has already claimed more than 600 lives this year with rebels staging a series of raids against police targets, despite some successes by security forces in arresting or killing a number of senior cadres.

"It is true that our party has suffered some serious leadership losses, but we were able to inflict serious losses on the enemy too," the rebel leader said.

"Overall, our party's influence has grown stronger and it has now come to be recognised as the only genuine alternative before the people," he added.

Last month, the prime minister rebuked regional police chiefs for failing to stem the insurgency, but analysts say the real problem has been the lack of a cohesive strategy.

Although the federal government has ruled out the use of the military in the anti-Maoist offensive, it has made it clear that the operation will be coordinated from New Delhi.

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Since its release, however, these "facts" have been appropriated by both sides and misconstrued by the press. Russia -- and numerous reporters -- have spun the report as an indictment of Georgia for "starting" the war. Georgia claims a victory as well, since the report acknowledges the war's causes must be understood in historical perspective.

Whose interpretation is right? And why did the report fail at its task of creating a "common understanding of the facts" that would move forward the process of reconciliation?

To answer the first question, neither perspective is accurate. In fact, the report blames Russia for starting the war with Georgia. But it also blames Georgia for starting a civil war within its own borders, and no acknowledgments of the historical context lessen that blame. Perhaps more importantly, both parties violated the laws of war.

In a nutshell, two armed conflicts, not one, took place in the Caucasus in August 2008. And two relevant branches of international law -- on the use of force and on the conduct of force during and after hostilities -- governed the legality of these wars.

The first armed conflict was a civil war within the borders of the state of Georgia, between the Georgian military and militias associated with the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This war (or set of wars) began as a low intensity conflict. Georgia is to blame for escalating it to the level of a civil war through an attack on the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, on August 7, 2008.

The report also found the attack on Tskhinvali violated the laws of war, which govern not whether armed conflict is legitimate, but how it may be carried out. The South Ossetian militias behaved badly too, the report finds, especially after the ceasefire -- looting, pillaging, raping, and burning villages -- but at least they were acting in self-defense at the start.

The second armed conflict was an international war between Georgia and Russia, which entered the conflict in support of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on August 8, 2008. Russia started this second, international war by sending troops across the Georgian border in violation of the territorial integrity norm set out in the UN Charter.

Illegal Wars

The report demonstrates that this was also an illegal war. In the absence of a UN Security Council resolution, such an act is permissible only in self-defense. The report found that Russia was not acting in self-defense because Georgia had not attacked Russia, only its own territory, and there was no evidence that Georgia had intentionally fired upon Russian peacekeeping troops in Tskhinvali. A moral case can sometimes be made for invasion to protect civilian populations from massive human rights abuses, as NATO claimed to have done in Kosovo in 1999. The EU report found no evidence that such a claim was valid in this case, as the civilian loss of life did not rise to such levels, much less to "genocide."

Not only was Russia's invasion of Georgia illegal, but like Georgia in its civil war, Russia also conducted its war illegally -- by using disproportionate force and by deploying cluster munitions in such a way as to cause civilian deaths.

Two illegal wars, each started by a different guilty party, both conducted illegally. So why are both sides claiming victory here? And why have so many commentators claimed that the report in fact "proves Georgia started the war?" How did the EU lose control of the message?

The key problem is that the report is framed in such a way as to conflate the civil and interstate wars of which the "August war" was composed. The title of the report refers to "the Conflict in Georgia." It is not until page 36 that the 43-page summary of the report even acknowledges that there were two different components to the war, governed by separate international rules. Although the authors do in fact disaggregate these aspects to some extent in the actual report, the fact that they fail to do so in the summary muddles the legal analysis completely. No wonder both sides now claim the report exonerates them on the question of "who started it."

This is a shame, since the longest chapter of the report deals not with who might be blamed for starting the war, but with the way hostilities were conducted by all parties. Regardless of a war's legality, there are legal and illegal ways of fighting. Commentators desperate to focus on the blameworthiness of one party or the other for the war itself have diverted attention from the report's discussions of war crimes -- which were committed by all sides, especially by the one party (South Ossetia) least to blame for taking up arms in the first place.

Ultimately, those who read the entire report will find it is a masterpiece of legal and evidentiary analysis. The authors have painstakingly synthesized multiple branches of international law with scores of interviews, reams of source material, and numerous reports from NGOs. The report itself is nearly 500 pages of "applying principles to facts." Despite a few inconsistencies, it is generally fair-minded, objective and apolitical. It should have done the job.

But in putting together the detailed legal analysis, too little thought appears to have been given to the political impact, or how to frame the report so that its key findings are intelligible to a public and press corps not intimately familiar with the nuances of international law. By failing to deliver the key findings up front with savvy and punch, the EU Mission allowed the report to be hijacked by interested parties for a continuation of the very political argument it should have put to rest.

Charli Carpenter is a professor of international relations at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The views expressed in this commentary are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL or DefenceTalk.

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"There's reason to believe that Hakimullah may have died recently -- perhaps as the result of factional in-fighting within the Pakistani Taliban," the official told AFP.

US and Pakistani officials are reviewing information about the alleged incident and have yet to confirm the death. The Pentagon declined to comment.

If confirmed, the warlord's demise would be the latest setback to the Pakistani Taliban, which have carved out camps in the mountains of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt.

"Of course, it would be a very good thing if Hakimullah were off the streets," noted the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the intelligence matter.

"We're working hard -- as are the Pakistanis -- to determine what has happened to him."

Washington says the militants are plotting attacks on the West and slipping over the border to target foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Hakimullah, who is believed to be about 30, was tapped to lead the feared Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) after his predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed by a missile fired from a CIA-operated drone aircraft on August 5.

Hakimullah's brother, Kalimullah Mehsud, was also killed on Monday in a battle in the lawless insurgent stronghold of North Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistani security officials said.

The young commander, who did not make media or public appearances since his appointment, has two surviving brothers.

Pakistan's government blames the TTP -- formed by Baitullah Mehsud in late 2007 -- for most of about 270 attacks and suicide bombings that have killed more than 2,100 people across Pakistan in the past two years.

Pakistani security forces earlier this year launched a fierce offensive to purge the northwest of Taliban fighters, and has already claimed success in the Swat valley and Bajaur. But unrest has rumbled on.

Analysts say they will face a much tougher task in North and South Waziristan, which are teeming with both Pakistani Taliban and other Islamist militants who fled Afghanistan after the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban there in 2001.

Meanwhile, Washington has stepped up missile attacks by US drone aircraft in the region.

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"America will never make the mistake of drone strikes in Baluchistan," said Aslam Raisani, chief minister of a province troubled by attacks by both separatist rebels and Taliban insurgents.

"Any type of American attack will have serious implications. I hope America will not make this mistake -- such attacks would harm the American interests in the area and there may be a public reaction against any such attack."

His comments come after the London Times on Sunday quoted unnamed sources as saying US drone strikes could target supreme Taliban leader Mullah Omar, an Afghan reported to have carved out a safe haven in Baluchistan's Quetta city.

Such reports have sparked fierce debate here, amid increased US drone strikes in the northwest tribal belt. Pakistanis complain of civilian casualties and see the attacks as a violation of the country's sovereignty.

Foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit told local Geo television channel that the reports of a so-called "Quetta Shura" -- a council of Afghan Taliban in the city -- were based on "speculation" and urged the US to share information.

"If the United States has some intelligence report they should share it with Pakistan," Basit said. "We remain in touch with the US government and we keep telling them that such reports trigger unnecessary doubts."

Raisani also denied reports of Taliban commanders plotting on his patch.

"A Taliban Shura led by Mullah Omar does not exist in Quetta or in any part of Baluchistan... Not a single Taliban militant is present in any part of this province," he told reporters late Wednesday.

Analysts, intelligence sources and foreign officials have widely reported that Taliban fighters are using Baluchistan as a base, crossing over the border into Afghanistan by land to and from the militant stronghold of Kandahar.

The Washington Post on Tuesday quoted US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, as saying that "the Quetta Shura is high on Washington's list."

The United States carries out frequent drone attacks in the northwest tribal area bordering Afghanistan, with seven strikes reported last month.

The US does not openly confirm it is staging missile strikes in Pakistani territory, but rarely denies the reports and has pushed Pakistan to get tough on the alleged Taliban and Al-Qaeda safe havens along the porous border.

Washington says the insurgents are slipping across the frontier and staging attacks on US and other NATO troops stationed in Afghanistan.

But Raisani warned that US strikes would destabilise Baluchistan further and could jeopardize the NATO supply lines to some 100,000 foreign troops battling the Taliban in Afghanistan.

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