Pakistan retakes Buner town from Taliban

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, April 29 (UPI) -- Pakistani government troops have retaken control of a strategic town in the Buner valley that had been overrun by Taliban militants, officials said.

Commandos dropped into the town of Daggar, lowered on ropes from helicopters, and were linking up with up with paramilitary Frontier Corps security forces already in the area in a strategy to surround Taliban militants, officials told Wednesday's Times of London.

"We saw a helicopter dropping troops on the hills early this morning," Arshad Imran, standing in the bazaar at Daggar, told The Times. "It came about seven or eight times. We hear sound of explosions off and on and we can see helicopters flying over the mountains."

The fighting in Daggar was part a 3-day-old army offensive to roll back Taliban advances. The takeover of the Buner valley, only 60 miles northwest of Islamabad, raised alarms in the West as the Islamic militants poured into the area from the neighboring Swat valley, where the government had concluded a controversial peace deal with the insurgents.

The Times said Islamabad had hoped that allowing the implementation of strict Islamic law in Swat would quiet the militants, but they have instead become emboldened.