Pat Dollard | Young Americans

A look inside the world of Maulana Fazlullah, the latest star face in the Islamist war on Pakistan. How deep his ties to Al Qaeda run is not clear…

SWAT, Pakistan - Militants seized a police post and paramilitary troops set up sandbagged bunkers to bolster security in a tense town in northwestern Pakistan where supporters of a pro-Taliban cleric have taken up arms against the government, police said Sunday.

Militants have clashed with security forces in the Swat district since Friday, when the military raided the stronghold of the pro-Taliban cleric, Maulana Fazlullah.

Fifteen people have been killed in the violence, including six security personnel and seven civilians who were beheaded by militants, officials said.

Militants captured the police post in Charbagh village near Mingora, the main town in Swat district, late Saturday after nearly a dozen policemen deployed there abandoned it when they came under heavy attack, a senior police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make media comments.

Police and paramilitary troops set up security posts and bunkers protected by sandbags in Kabal, a small town near Mingora dominated by supporters of Fazlullah, who is demanding implementation of Islamic laws in the region, the official said.

Militants and security forces also exchanged gunfire in Kabal late Saturday but there were no reports of any injuries, he said.

Authorities have deployed 2,500 paramilitary troops to Swat to fight supporters of Fazlullah, who has launched a Taliban-style Islamization campaign in the once-peaceful and scenic district, and has called for a jihad, or holy war, against the government.

Two days after the troop deployment in Swat, a suicide car bombing struck a military truck in Mingora, killing 19 soldiers and a civilian. But militants denied involvement in the bombing.

Militants decapitated six security personnel and seven civilians who were accused of being government spies, to “terrorize people,” said Home Secretary Badshah Gul Wazir, the top civilian security official in North West Frontier Province where Swat is located.

The rise in militancy in northwestern Pakistan has shaken the authority of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S. war on terror.

Fazlullah is the leader of the banned pro-Taliban group Tehrik Nifaz- e-Sharia Mohammedi, or Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law.

In Malakand, a rugged area bordering Swat, authorities dropped pamphlets from airplanes on Sunday urging residents to cooperate with security forces, state-run Associated Press of Pakistan news agency reported. The government made similar appeals in Swat a day earlier.

Titled “Message in the name of Patriotic Pakistanis,” the pamphlets asked residents to help “the government in purging (Malakand) of terrorists.”

Separately, three rockets hit the provincial capital of Peshawar before dawn Sunday, one striking a politician’s house across the road from the U.S. Consulate, but no one was hurt, police said.

(AP)