Photo Gallery Pakistan Mounts Anti-Taliban Offensive
People pray during a funeral service for police officers killed by gunmen in Lahore, Pakistan, on Thursday, Oct. 15. Under pressure from the United States to act, the Pakistani army this weekend moved to stamp out the Taliban insurgency in South Waziristan.
On Saturday, around 30,000 Pakistani soldiers launched a much-awaited ground offensive in an al-Qaida and Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan along the Afghan border.
A Pakistani border checkpoint near Chaman near Afghanistan. With the Pakistani army now invading parts of South Waziristan, it is feared that the number of people fleeing could climb to 200,000, despite a ban on movement in the area.
Here, Pakistani policemen guard a security post in Dera Ismail Khan in the country's North West Frontier Province, near Waziristan. When the ground offensive became imminent, flights into the region were cancelled on Friday.
Pakistani security authorities check vehicles for bombs in a roadshide checkpoint in the southern port city of Karachi following the recent wave of suicide bombings.
Fleeing the area. Aid organizations estimate that more than 100,000 people are already fleeing as a result of the military offensive in South Waziristan.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's (pictured here) political leadership has frustrated the country's army chief, Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. The country is in one of its most difficult crises and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani travels to China, while President Asif Ali Zardari disappears completely," he told a small group of journalists.
