Police: Taliban suspects among Pakistani refugees

[May 29, 2009]  ISLAMABAD (AP) -- Police have arrested 39 suspected Taliban fighters hiding among refugees from a military offensive to rout militants from Pakistan's Swat Valley, a senior officer said Friday.

The suspected Taliban had cut their hair short and shaved their beards in a bid to disguise themselves from authorities and blend in with civilians who have fled the month-old campaign in the country's northwest, said local police chief Syed Akhtar Ali Shah.

The U.N. refugee agency said this week that fighting in northwestern Pakistan has uprooted nearly 2.4 million people this month, and that the number was rising by more than 100,000 each day.

Aid agencies say more than 160,000 refugees are now living in about a dozen sweltering camps just south of the Swat Valley in towns such as Mardan, with many of the rest being taken in by family or residents.

"These Taliban have mixed up themselves among the refugees," Shah, the Mardan police chief, told The Associated Press. "They have shaven off their beards."

He said 12 of the suspects were arrested in camps and the rest in different houses where refugees are staying with relatives or have rented.

He accused them of violence in Swat and nearby Buner, which the Taliban entered last month from Swat, triggering the military's offensive.

The military says it has killed more than 1,100 militants in its offensive, which is strongly backed by Washington and viewed as a test of the Pakistani government's resolve to quell Islamic extremism.

[Associated Press; By ASIF SHAHZAD]

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