ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Fighting between local and foreign militants Friday killed 52 people, bringing to more than 200 the number of dead in recent days in a conflict between Pakistanis and suspected al-Qaida-linked extremists, a senior official said.
Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said 45 Uzbek militants and seven tribesmen died in battles in South Waziristan, a lawless region used as a rear base by Taliban militants fighting in Afghanistan and where the United States fears al-Qaida is regrouping.
Since fighting began last week, 213 people have been killed, including 177 Uzbeks and their local allies, Sherpao said.
The minister said the conflict intensified Friday after foreigners failed to comply with an ultimatum from tribal elders to leave their territory. Security officials said tribal militias had fired rockets at the hideouts of the foreigners in several locations.
An aide to Maulvi Nazir, the leader of the purportedly pro-government side in the conflict, said earlier Friday that they had killed 35 Uzbeks and lost 10 of their own men. He said both sides were using heavy weapons.
South Waziristan is generally off-limits to journalists, making it hard to verify reports of the fighting.
Under pressure from the United States to do more against the Taliban and al-Qaida, the government has claimed that the violence in South Waziristan vindicates its policy of using traditional leaders, and not the army, to combat militancy along the border.
Government officials claim Nazir, a tribal chief previously aligned with the Taliban, has come over to their side.
Some analysts, however, say militants with links to Taliban and al-Qaida are involved on both sides of the current conflict, which also pits local tribes against each other, and that blood feuds could deepen insecurity in a region viewed as a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.
Hundreds of Central Asian and Arab militants linked to al-Qaida fled to the semiautonomous region after the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and forged alliances with local tribes.
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