Pakistan pushes into militant havens
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- Pakistan's military said it moved farther into mountainous militant terrain Sunday and hit key Taliban and al Qaida strongholds in South Waziristan.
By the second day of the offensive, the Pakistani army said, 60 militants and five Pakistani soldiers had died, The New York Times reported.
But a Taliban spokesman, Azam Tariq, told reporters by telephone the militants had killed 60 soldiers.
An unidentified military official told the newspaper "the level of resistance from the militants is not very high," but that the Pakistani military faced heavily mined areas and homemade bombs.
An estimated 28,000 Pakistani soldiers battled as many as 20,000 militants skilled at fighting in the rugged terrain, the BBC said.
The militants' strategy involves encouraging Pakistani forces to move farther into militant areas in South Waziristan to keep forces in a drawn-out campaign in the mountains over the winter, the Times said.
As the offensive intensified, Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of the United States Central Command overseeing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, traveled to Islamabad Sunday to meet with Pakistani military and civilian leaders. The U.S. military has favored the offensive, which began early Saturday, in the wake of Taliban attacks on Pakistani security installations over the past two weeks.
Thousands of civilians continued fleeing to camps just outside battle zones Sunday, the BBC reported.
Zar Wali, 29, fled Makeen in South Waziristan Sunday with 13 relatives after hearing bombs and gunfire, traveling on foot and by wagon to Bannu, about 50 miles away, The Washington Post reported. In a phone interview, Wali told the Post he had seen a truck caught in the gunfire and that three women inside had been hit.
"It is very bad for the civilians," Wali said.
Balloon boy: a hoax -- and impossibility
"Balloon boy" could never even have gotten off the ground in the silver, homemade craft that looked like a flying saucer, Colorado authorities said Sunday.
Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden told reporters a specialist at Colorado State University had determined the balloon would not be "capable of lifting off" with 37-pound Falcon Heene inside.
So not only was the 6-year-old Fort Collins boy's widely reported, though mythical, balloon ride a hoax to attract publicity, it was also an impossibility, Alderden said.
The boys parents, Richard Heene and his wife, Mayumi, had reported the balloon had come untethered Thursday morning and gone aloft with Falcon in a compartment.
Now, the parents are likely to face charges including conspiracy, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, false reporting to authorities and attempting to influence a public servant, the sheriff said. Authorities said the parents could also be forced to to pay restitution for costs of the search-and-rescue operations.
"They put on a very good show for us, and we bought it," Alderden said.
He had said Thursday that an expert had determined the balloon could carry the child, but that was based on Richard Heene's saying it weighed 18 pounds less than it does.
Falcon turned up at the house -- his parents said he had been hiding -- after TV news covered the balloon's 50-mile journey for more than two hours.
Police, Alderden said, had found the parents' story credible, until the first "ah-hah" moment -- when Falcon said during an interview on CNN that "we did this for the show."
The boy, it turns out, was in on the hoax, concocted to land a reality-television show, Alderden said.
Karzai may not accept election recount
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai's campaign hinted he may not accept results of a recount of votes from the August election.
Campaign officials took aim over the weekend at the recount process, criticizing the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission doing the tally, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
As officials said the announcement of the results would be delayed, Karzai backers demonstrated Sunday against "foreign interference" in the elections.
The recount announcement had been expected Saturday, two months after the vote, which U.N. officials say was tainted by widespread fraud. Most of the ballots believed to be fraudulent were for Karzai, and the recount would likely bring his share to less than 50 percent, which would force a runoff.
The Afghanistan Elections Complaints Commission, which includes foreign representatives, said disagreements with the Independent Election Commission had led to recount delays, Radio France Internationale reported.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said Karzai is likely to be the winner even if there is a runoff, but noted that backers of his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, are threatening to protest if there is no follow-up vote.
Bomber kills Revolutionary Guard members
SARBAAZ, Iran, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- A suicide bomber targeted Iran's military elite Sunday in an attack that killed six Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and 36 others.
The attack came at a gathering of tribal leaders in a southeastern province near the Pakistani border, the official Iranian news agency reported.
The man detonated an explosives belt at a gymnasium in Pisheen in Sistan-Baluchistan, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday evening.
State media said the Sunni Muslim militant group Jundallah, or Soldiers of God, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Among those killed was Nour Ali Shoushtari, the deputy head of the Guard's ground forces, who was mediating between the two groups, CNN reported.
A U.S. State Department spokesman denied Iranian accusations the United States was behind the attack.
The Guard, which has more than 200,000 members, was initially created to protect the leaders of the revolution. Today, its scope has broadened to include enforcement of the government's Islamic moral codes and protection of Iran's oil fields and missile arsenals.
