Govt offers Rs 50m reward for Mehsud

PESHAWAR: Pakistan on Sunday offered an Rs 50 million reward for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of local Taliban head Baitullah Mehsud, currently holed up in the tribal belt. Two national Urdu-language newspapers and local papers in the northwest city of Peshawar carried an advertisement also offering rewards for the capture of 10 of Baitullah’s senior Taliban commanders. “The government has announced a cash reward for anybody providing authentic information leading to the capture of these (11), dead or alive,” said the advertisement. It then lists the wanted men, along with their bounties. “Innocent people are being killed because of the bloody activities of these so-called defenders of Islam,” it adds. Fayyaz Tooro, home secretary of the North West Frontier Province, said it was the first time Pakistan had slapped a figure on Al Qaeda-linked Mehsud. “This list has been issued by the Interior Ministry and has been published for the first time in close cooperation with security agencies, which provided invaluable information to the government,” Tooro told AFP. Mehsud already has a five-million-dollar bounty on his head offered by the United States, with the US State Department branding the warlord “a key Al Qaeda facilitator in the tribal areas of South Waziristan”. agencies

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