At least 10 militants were killed in another presumed US drone strike on Pakistan's tribal areas July 3. The missiles reportedly hit the hideout of Taliban commander Noor Wali in Mochikhel, South Waziristan—a district controlled by Pakistan's top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud. Noor Wali is part of Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban organisation. Mochikhel is near the key Servakai route, currently the scene of fighting between Pakistani security forces and Mehsud's militants. There have been an estimated 35 US strikes since last August, killing over 340 people. (BBC, July 3)

Pakistani jet-fighters continued to run bombing raids over North Waziristan tribal region, killing seven people on June 30, residents said. Warplanes bombed the Wacha Bibi area, west of Miramshah. A military convoy was ambushed in the locality on Sunday in which 27 soldiers were killed. The army claimed that 10 militants were killed in a counter attack.

Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported June 7 that the government is establishing a Sufi Advisory Council, with an aim of combating extremism by promoting Sufism and its pacifistic vision of Islam. Noting this development June 26, Reuters' FaithWorld blog adds that such stateside establishmentarian voices as the RAND and the Heritage Foundation have recently advocated such a strategy.

The militant cleric Sufi Mohammed, who brokered the failed Swat Valley peace deal, has been arrested and transferred to a secret "safehouse" in Peshawar, together with his wife, an unnamed official told Italy's AKI news service. The government is keeping the arrests secret until it decides what the cleric's fate will be, the source, who added: "This could be the beginning of a new round of a dialogue as the military operation so far failed to get the government any place."

At least 45 people were killed in a missile strike by a US drone aircraft in Pakistan's South Waziristan region, officials there said June 23. Those killed had been attending a funeral for others killed in a US drone strike earlier in the day. The region is a stronghold of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

Missiles fired from a presumed US drone hit a compound in Ghurlama village, near Wana, in the Birmal subdivision of Pakistan's South Waziristan district June 18, killing 11 suspected militants. The compound was said to be owned by a local Taliban commander called Malang. Hailing from Gangikhel tribe, Malang is said to be a close associate of Commander Maulvi Nazir. This was the second drone attack in South Waziristan over the past week. On June 14, a missile hit a car in Laddha subdivision inhabited mostly by the Mehsuds, killing three people. (Dawn, Pakistan, June 18)

Militants bombed two mosques in in Pakistan June 12, killing at least eight, including a cleric who was an outspoken critic of the Taliban. In Lahore, a suicide bomber detonated his payload inside the religious complex run by Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi, a leading Sunni cleric who was vocal in his opposition to suicide attacks and other Taliban tactics. The attack seemed aimed specifically at Naeemi, whose quarters near the entrance of the mosque were completely destroyed. At least four others were killed in the attack. Another mosque bombing in Nowshera, northwest of Islamabad, killed at least three and injured more than 20.

Pakistan's army said June 5 it has arrested senior associates of the radical Islamist cleric Sufi Mohammad, in the country's northwest. Six men, including Sufi Mohammad's deputy Maulana Mohammed Alim, spokesman Ameer Izzat Khan, and aide Syed Wahab were detained, officials said. Mohammad is the father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, Taliban leader in the Swat valley where the army is battling militants.