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Pakistan vows to 'flush out' terror threat

By Zhang Haizhou (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-06-12 18:59

Pakistan said it would not stop the war against Taliban militants in the Swat valley until all terrorists were eliminated, the country's interior minister said in Beijing, three days after a hotel bomb killed 13.

Rehman Malik said the Pakistani government has now taken over more than 95 percent of the Swat area and put the terrorists "on the run".

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"This is a war to save Pakistan, a war to save the region," Malik told reporters today.

"That's why we will continue to fight till we flush out the last terrorist from our side," he said.

On Tuesday night, a suicide truck-bomber drove up to the Pearl Continental Hotel in the northeast Pakistani city of Peshawar and set off explosives, leveling a corner of the five-story hotel.

Malik said the blast had killed 13, including two foreign UN workers, and injured 67.

Ye Hailin, a South Asia expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said it was the militants’tactic to rattle the government to stop the war.

Still, Malik said "every segment of society" has shown unity in the war against the terrorists.

"When we started this action in Swat, obviously, we expected some kind of reaction," he said.

He added that he had yesterday ordered an investigation team to Peshawar.

Malik noted that the terror threat Islamabad is faced with now also endangers the stability of the whole region. He called for the international community to support Pakistan's action in the Swat region.