In the first suicide bombing taking place in Azad Jammu & Kashmir on Friday (June 26, 2009), two soldiers were killed and three others injured, early morning in Muzaffarabad. The incident happened when a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up near a military vehicle. Accepting the responsibility of the attack, Baitullah Mehsud’s deputy Hakimullah Mehsud was reported to have told media that the attack signified Taliban’s strength in the face of continuing military strikes on Taliban hideouts in South Waziristan.

Hakimullah Mehsud was reported as saying, ‘The military operations have not weakened us.’ Analysts are, however, looking at the bombing in Azad Jammu & Kashmir as a sign of Taliban’s desperation due to enormous pressure cast by the military operations against them in different parts of the NWFP and the adjacent tribal belt.

Meanwhile, the latest news headlines tell that 20 Taliban have been killed and 15 others injured when the military targeted Taliban hideouts in South Waziristan. The conflict in North Waziristan also continues where, of late, four people, including three security personnel, have been killed and over two dozen injured as a result of remotely controlled bomb blasts made on a military convoy.