ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan launched a ground offensive against militant strongholds near the Afghan border on Monday after evacuating nearly half a million people from the region, the army said, in the most significant escalation of a two-week long operation to root out insurgents trying to overthrow the government.

The ground offensive is the second phase of a long-awaited operation against militants in the North Waziristan tribal area, a lawless, mountainous stretch of land in northwest Pakistan. The military announced the operation on June 15 but has mostly limited its tactics to airstrikes while giving time to hundreds of thousands of people to pack up their belongings and leave to safer areas.

The U.S. has long pushed for such an operation to go after militants that use the area as a safe haven from which to attack targets in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

But for years Pakistan has said its forces were too strung out battling militants in other areas of the northwest to go into North Waziristan. The military is also believed to have been reluctant to launch the operation without political support from the civilian government. Until recently Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had been pushing for negotiations over military force as a way to end the years of bloodshed caused by the militants.

The army began a house-to-house search in Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, the army statement said. It said nearly 15 militants were killed in the initial ground advance. The town is also the headquarters for a number of different militant groups such as the Pakistani Taliban. Al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban also have a presence in North Waziristan.

The operation began days after militants attacked the main airport in the southern port city of Karachi, killing 26 people. The 10 attackers also died in the roughly five-hour siege that shocked Pakistanis by showing how vulnerable the country's institutions have become.

The siege of the country's busiest airport became a turning point in the government's willingness to negotiate with the militants. A week after the attack, the military announced its troops were starting the North Waziristan operation.

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In this Friday, June 27, 2014 photo, a Pakistan army soldier checks a vehicle in Bannu, North Waziri …

Pakistani forces killed 376 militants during the first 15 days of the offensive, the statement said, adding that 17 soldiers also died. North Waziristan has always been a challenging area for journalists to access but the operation has made it even more difficult to independently verify reports of casualties.

The military said infantry and commandos are leading the ground advance. Three soldiers were wounded in an exchange of fire, the statement said.

Mansur Mahsud, from the FATA Research Centre which researches the tribal areas in northwestern Pakistan, said they had been receiving reports that many militants had left for neighboring Afghanistan or into the more remote mountainous areas in the northwest after the airstrikes. But he said a ground offensive was still necessary to clear the area.

In the past, critics have accused Pakistan of playing a double game, supporting or tolerating some militants that it sees as useful in maintaining influence in neighboring Afghanistan, and going after other militants that attack the Pakistani state. The military has said that this operation will go after everyone equally, but many question how aggressive they will be.

The operation could take three to four months, and it isn't likely to end militancy across the country immediately, said Mahsud. Militant groups still have a presence in places such as Karachi or Punjab province or other parts of the northwest.

But over time, Mahsud said it will significantly weaken the militants by denying them a place to headquarter their organizations and to train new recruits.

"It cannot end militancy 100 percent in Pakistan but it can have a significant effect," he said. "Once this area is cleared the militants are forced to shift to Afghanistan or the mountains."

About 468,000 people have poured out of North Waziristan, flooding the nearby Pakistani areas of Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan in anticipation of the ground offensive. An additional 95,000 went to Afghanistan, the United Nations reported.

The Pakistani army has already conducted several military operations in the tribal badlands along the Afghan border, including 2009 offensives in the scenic Swat valley and in South Waziristan, the onetime headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban.

The Pakistani Taliban is a loose network of several local militant groups who want to overthrow the country's government in a bid to install their own harsh brand of Islamic law. In their decade-old deadly campaign of bombings, shootings and other attacks, they have killed thousands of Pakistanis.

The government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ever since he took office last summer had been trying to negotiate a peace deal with the militants. The operation has effectively ended prospects of any such move in near future.

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Pakistan launches ground offensive

The nation is targeting militant strongholds near the Afghan border after evacuating nearly half a million people.
Second phase

Australia’s Top Military Bishop Resigns Over Sex Abuse Charge

Bishop Max Davis, the head of the church’s military diocese,Photo: AP Photo/Australian Catholic Bishops Conference

By Associated Press, June 30, 2014 – http://tinyurl.com/ofrm8wz

A senior member of Australia’s Catholic Church has stepped down from his post after being charged with sexually abusing a teenage student decades ago, the church said on Monday.

Bishop Max Davis, the head of the church’s military diocese, is accused of abusing a student in 1969 when he was a teacher at St. Benedict’s College in Western Australia, the Catholic Military Ordinariate of Australia said in a statement. The Ordinariate is the Catholic Diocese of the country’s defence force.

Bishop Davis – the most senior clergyman in Australia to be charged in the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal – has denied the allegations.

Western Australia police said they charged a 68-year-old man on Friday with indecently assaulting a 13-year-old boy. The man, who police did not name, faces three counts of indecent treatment of a child under the age of 14.

Bishop Davis has stepped down while the court deals with the case.

“At that time – 45 years ago – the bishop was not ordained,” the church said in a statement. “The bishop emphatically denies the allegation and the charge will be defended.”

Bishop Davis will appear in a Perth court on July 25.

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military found the bodies of three missing teenagers on Monday, just over two weeks after they were abducted in the West Bank, allegedly by Hamas militants. The grisly discovery culminated a feverish search that led to Israel's largest ground operation in the Palestinian territory in nearly a decade and raised fears of renewed fighting with Hamas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was huddling with his Security Cabinet late Monday to discuss a response.

Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, a 16-year-old with dual Israeli-American citizenship, disappeared while hitchhiking home near the West Bank city of Hebron late at night on June 12 and were never heard from again. Despite the dangers, hitchhiking is common among Israelis traveling in and out of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The Israeli military and the Shin Bet security agency announced late Monday that the bodies had been found. "The bodies are currently going through forensic identification. The families of the abducted teens have been notified," the army said. The Shin Bet said the bodies had been buried in a field near the village of Halhul, just north of Hebron.

Binyamin Proper, who was among the civilian volunteers that found the bodies, told Channel 2 TV that a member of the search party "saw something suspicious on the ground, plants that looked out of place, moved them and moved some rocks and then found the bodies. We realized it was them and we called the army."

Israel accused Hamas of being behind the abductions and launched a frantic manhunt throughout the West Bank, arresting nearly 400 Hamas operatives in the process. Last week, Israel identified two well-known Hamas operatives as the chief suspects. The two men remained on the run late Monday.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the kidnappings, and his forces coordinated closely with Israel during the search for the teens. But Netanyahu has called on Abbas to dissolve a unity government recently formed with the backing of Hamas, saying it is impossible to be committed to peace while simultaneously sitting together with a group that kidnaps Israelis. Abbas has so far refused the calls, saying his new government is committed to his political program. Hamas is not part of his government, but has lent its backing from the outside.

The search for the teens captured the nation's attention. The Israeli media delivered round-the-clock updates on the search, and the mothers of the three teens became high-profile figures as they campaigned for their sons' return. Israelis held daily prayer vigils, including mass gatherings attended by tens of thousands of people at the Western Wall, the holiest prayer site in Judaism, and in a downtown square in Tel Aviv.

Late Monday, dozens of Israeli forces moved into the village of Halhul. There were no further details on the operation.

In Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, "We obviously condemn in the strongest possible terms violence that takes the lives of innocent civilians."

Bodies of 3 missing Israeli teens found

The settlers kidnapped in the West Bank were found a short distance from where they were last seen.
Meeting called

KALAK, Iraq (AP) — Waving pots and pans, police pushed back dozens of hungry Iraqi refugees as they rushed to seize free food, ending their first daylong fast of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan in an encampment for the displaced.

Shouting men scrambled Sunday to reach pots of rice, meat and chicken stew in this dusty, hot encampment some 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the northern city of Irbil, the capital of Iraq's self-ruled Kurdish region. The chaotic scene underscored the fearful insecurity of displaced Iraqis as they begin Ramadan in a nation gripped by unrest and bitterly divided along sectarian lines.

For Bashir Khalil, a 39-year-old Shiite, and his wife Nidal, a Sunni, Ramadan has been robbed of its rhythm of communal solidarity.

The couple, who fled Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul after it was captured by Sunni extremists earlier this month, has always been poor. But in their impoverished quarter of the city, neighbors shared their food. Here, when the food ended, there would be no more until another charity came by.

"When this food finishes, there'll be nothing else," 34-year-old Nidal Khalil lamented.

She and her husband fled after Sunni militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, who consider Shiites apostates, interrogated them. He was under suspicion as a Shiite, and she was questioned because she worked as a cleaner in a Shiite charity.

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In this Sunday, June 29, 2014 photo, displaced Iraqi citizens gather for a communal meal to break th …

They returned days later after receiving assurances from local gunmen that they wouldn't be harmed, but found their home had been damaged in clashes.

"We don't want this one or that one," said Nidal Khalil, referring to the Shiite-dominated government and the Sunni insurgents. "Neither of them cares about us poor people."

Her mother-in-law, Shamsa, sat nearby, smoking a cigarette. Fasting Muslims are not supposed to smoke, eat or drink during daylight hours, but the 70-year-old woman shrugged and said she couldn't fast in the heat.

Though Bashir Khalil did not manage to get any of the food donated by a local television station, his 10-year-old daughter, Sara, shared the bag filled with containers of soup, rice and meat that she managed to grab in the melee.

At the encampment's edge, it was quiet in tent D42, where Umm Mishal watched the sun sink over the horizon alongside her youngest daughter Amal, who wore a torn red dress.

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In this Sunday, June 29, 2014 photo, displaced Iraqi women hold pots as they queue to receive food d …

"Ramadan is a generous, blessed month. We will not go hungry," the 49-year-old woman said, even as she complained that other families had taken more than their fair share of the donated food, chaotically distributed off the back of trucks.

"They have grape juice," she said, pointing at another family.

Then, on a plastic sheet emblazoned with the United Nations' logo, she set out three tubs of soup, three plates of rice, a loaf of bread, a small roasted chicken and sliced watermelon.

The evening's meal was taken care of. Suddenly giddy, she exclaimed, "God has blessed us!"

"Eat some chicken!" she said with a giggle.