ISLAMABAD: Security forces stormed into the main town in the Swat valley and fought street battles Saturday in a bid to capture the capital of the northwest district from militant control, the military said.

The director general of the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), Major General Athar Abbas told a news conference that parts of Mingora had already been cleared and that 17 militants, including an important commander of Matta Usman, were killed during the most recent fighting of Pakistan’s northwest offensive. He said another important commander; Khursheed Qasai has been arrested from Watta Kali area.

The ground assault on Mingora, a city with an estimated population of around 300,000 — of whom many have fled — marks the most crucial part of the military’s blistering offensive against militants in the scenic valley.

Mingora has effectively been under militant control for weeks and — as the administrative and business hub of the entire district — its capture is essential for the military to be able to declare ultimate victory in Swat.

“Today the most important phase of operation Rah-e-Rast, the clearance of Mingora, has commenced,” Abbas said.

“In the last 24 hours, security forces have entered Mingora; 17 miscreants-terrorists, including important miscreant commander were killed,” he said.

The military reported intense exchanges of fire and said one would-be suicide bomber was shot dead and that another “suicide vehicle” rigged with explosives had been destroyed.

Troops had been slowly tightening their encirclement of the city for days and Abbas said that militant supplies had been cut off.

Secretary General of Lebanon’s legendry anti-terrorist Movement, Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, on the 61st anniversary of the occupation of Palestine by the Zionists, said that the Zionist regime is a cancer and the cause of all wars and crises in the Middle East, while emphasizing all Arab and Muslim countries’ support for the Palestinian people. On the catastrophic occupation anniversary, known among the Palestinians as the Day of Nakba (The Catastrophe Day), Nasrallah emphasized that such a criminal regime can never be recognized as a legitimate government. On the forthcoming military maneuvers of the Zionist regime, he said the Zionist regime has decided to strengthen its warmongering policies as per admitted by the regime’s war minister who had said the games were steps towards war. The Hezbollah Secretary General warned against a new war by Israel in the region, calling on all people and Lebanese officials to be on high alert vis-à-vis the plots hatched by the Zionist illegal regime. Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah reiterated that despite the entire plots hatched by the enemies, the brave Palestinian nation will resist, as ever before, under the most intolerable conditions, continuing its victorious Intifadha movement under such conditions that everyone expected them to surrender. He added, the objective behind the establishment of such a regime at the heart of the Islamic countries was sowing the seeds of wars and crises in the region, while shedding light on the usurper regime’s merciless massacres of the defenseless and innocent people in the region. Nasrallah underlined that the Resistance is in its high level of readiness to thwart the Zionist threats, a matter understood well by the Zionists. The Zionist regime has always put in jeopardy the security and stability of the region while moving in line with its warmongering nature. The regime wanted in fact to impose its will on the regional countries by creating a general panic through its brutalities in practice along with its military show-offs. In line with the same policies, the Hezbollah Secretary General said, the Zionists have resorted to any kind of inhuman measure to make the Palestinians to surrender and yield to their wills. However, with a quick contemplation over the Resistance status and conditions, one could easily understand that the people in Palestine and Lebanon are fully aware of the Zionist plots, while keeping the Resistance bastion highly impenetrable coupled with military and spiritual capabilities. By the way, considering the Zionists’ defeats in the 33-day war against Lebanon in summer of 2006 and the recent 22-day attack on Gaza, Israeli usurper state will get to nowhere but mere failure.