Islamabad: President Mamnoon Hussain has said operation Zarb-e-Azb against terrorists is continuing successfully and is achieving its targets.
Addressing the tribal jirga in Landi Kotal today, he said the operation has now entered in its final phase. The President said almost all the areas of FATA have been cleared of the terrorists.
He said the operation had been launched after failure of the negotiations with the Taliban, because the terrorists wanted to destroy the country. Mamnoon Hussain expressed his pleasure that the process of repatriating the TDPs is going on rapidly.
The President said, FATA Reforms Commission will soon complete its work and the FATA will be taken at par with the other developed areas of the country. He announced one million rupees for the tribal jirga.
Earlier, addressing the inaugural ceremony of newly constructed Peshawar-Tourkham Road (N-5) at Shahgai Fort, Khyber Agency, President Mamnoon Hussain said that Peshawar-Tourkham Road will be a milestone in opening new era of peace, prosperity and development in the area.
He said the road will also open new vistas for enhancing new trade and economic ties with the neighboring countries and Central Asian States. He said it will also have a positive impact on peace situation, in the area and Afghanistan.
On this occasion, President Mamnoon Hussain unfolded plaque of the newly constructed road. Total length of Peshawar-Tourkham Road is forty-four kilometers, which has been completed at a cost of eight point six billion rupees.
The construction work of this road has been completed by Frontier Works Organization (FWO) with the financial assistance of the United States. Governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Sardar Mehtab Ahmad Khan and Chairman NHA Shahid Ashraf Tarar besides others, were also present on this occasion.
DG FWO Major General Muhammad Afzal briefed the President about Peshawar-Tourkham Road. More than three thousand terrorists have been killed since the Pak Army launched a massive operation in North Waziristan in June 2014.
The authorities vowed to step up their efforts in the wakening of a Taliban attack on a school in December that took lives of some 150 people, mostly children. Militants who carry out attacks on both sides of the border have long been based in Pakistan’s remote western tribal regions.