PESHAWAR: Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif on Sunday said the army would go to any length to finish terrorists from every nook and corner of the country.
“We are determined and will go to any length to finish all pockets of terrorists from any nook and corner of the country,” the army chief said during his visit to the Corps Headquarter where he was briefed by Corps Commander Lt Gen Hidayat-ur Rehman about the latest progress of military operation in Shawal.
Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif reached Peshawar on Sunday and attended funeral prayers and offered fateha for soldiers who were martyred in Shawal on Saturday in clash with suspected terrorists.
The funeral prayer was offered at the Corps Headquarters which was also attended by senior civil and military leadership, an Inter-Services Public Relations news release said.The COAS expressed solidarity with the bereaved families and later visited the injured soldiers at the CMH Peshawar.
The COAS expressed his complete satisfaction over progress in final push in North Waziristan to evict terrorists from isolated pockets of Shawal, close to Pak-Afghan border. He paid rich tributes to the sacrifices and resilience of soldiers who are courageously fighting terrorists in difficult mountainous area of Shawal.
“They got martyred but did not allow terrorists to escape from the valley,” the army chief said while lauding the courage of the soldiers.
On Saturday, as the final push in the densely forested strategic valley picked up pace, an intense exchange of fire took place after army’s ground forces surrounded a group of fleeing terrorists in the Mangroti area near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Shawal, the military’s media wing, the ISPR, had said in a brief statement.
The deadly battle came three days after the army chief visited North Waziristan and gave the go-ahead for the final phase of Operation Zarb-e-Azb launched in mid-June 2014 against homegrown terrorists and their foreign cohorts.Most parts of North Waziristan have been cleansed of terrorists and tens of thousands of tribesmen displaced by fighting have started returning to their homes in the area cleared by the military.
