SHAKTOI (News agencies) – A top Pakistani Taliban commander said he sent thousands of fighters to neighbouring Afghanistan to rebuff incoming US troops, a claim that comes as a Pakistani army offensive is believed to have pushed many of his men to flee their main redoubt.

Waliur Rehman told reporters that the Pakistani Taliban remain committed to battling the army in South Waziristan tribal region, but they are essentially waging a guerrilla war. Rehman is a deputy to Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, and the man in charge of the group's operations in South Waziristan. "Since US President Barack Obama is also sending additional forces to Afghanistan, we sent thousands of our men there to fight NATO and American forces," Rehman said. The Afghan "Taliban needed our help at this stage, and we are helping them". Col. Wayne Shanks, a US military spokesman in Afghanistan, called Rehman's comments "rhetoric" that were not to be believed. "We have not noticed any significant movement of insurgents in the border area," he said. Ishtiaq Ahmad, a professor of international relations at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, speculated the comments were just an attempt to worsen the already-tense relationship between the US and Pakistan. "When the United States expects Pakistan to synchronise its own counterterrorism policy with the troop surge ... the insurgents issue these statements in an attempt to create problems in this relationship," said Ahmad. Either stance is nearly impossible to independently verify. Access to the tribal belt, especially conflict zones, is severely restricted. Pakistani army spokesmen could not immediately be reached for comment. Rehman spoke in a large mud-brick compound in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan. Meanwhile, in a joint operation carried out by Afghan National Army (ANA) and police in northern Baghlan province, over 10 Taliban insurgents were killed and wounded, provincial governor Mohamed Akbar Barikzai said yesterday. "ANA and Afghan National Police killed and wounded more than 10 suspected Taliban insurgents in a clean-up operation conducted in Baghlan-e-Markazi district on Tuesday," Barikzai told reporters at a press conference. A local Taliban commander Mullah Zulmai was among the injured militants, he added. He did not give the exact figure of Taliban causalities, but admitted four police officers were also killed in the firefight. In another development, a human rights group has called on the Afghan government to investigate the death of a suspect who died while being held in prison by the intelligence service, saying his body showed signs of possible torture. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report seen yesterday that Abdul Basir, an Afghan citizen, died December 7 in a National Directorate of Security detention facility. According to the report, Basir's family was told he had committed suicide by jumping out of a window.