Islamabad, Nov 20: Pakistani forces are swooping on suspected Taliban supporters near the southwest border with Afghanistan and have arrested more than 500 Afghan "illegal immigrants," officials said today. "We have since last week detained more than 500 Afghans staying illegally in Baluchistan and they are being deported," Shoaib Suddle, police chief of the southwest province of Baluchistan, told.
The first 150 will be deported later today at the border town of Chaman, 100 kilometres west of the provincial capital Quetta.
"It is for the Afghan authorities to find out who is a Taliban among them but we suspect there may be many such elements in the lot," Suddle said.
The mass arrests mark the first large-scale effort by Pakistan to expel illegal Afghans from Baluchistan, and follows months of accusations that Taliban commanders and fighters are living freely in the province and orchestrating a guerrilla campaign inside Afghanistan from Pakistani soil.
Bureau Report