(26 Oct 2007) SHOTLIST
++AUDIO/VIDEO AS INCOMING++
Imam Dheri, 26 October 2007
1. Various of helicopter flying in sky
2. Wide shot of blast, with smoke rising
3. Wide shot of people looking at madrassa (seminary) ++MUTE++
4. Close-up of madrassa ++MUTE++
5. Wide shot of madrassa
6. Pan shot of mountain across onlookers and towards madrassa on the left
7. Mid shot of mountain ++MUTE++
8. Wide of mountain ++MUTE++
Mingora, North West Pakistan 25 October 2007
9. Mid shot of damaged truck (Clients please note this shot relates to the suicide attack 25th October in Mingora in which 19 soldiers and one civilian died)
STORYLINE
Troops and helicopter gunships attacked the village stronghold of a militant Pakistani cleric on Friday, a day after a suicide bombing killed 20, as the conflict between government and pro-Taliban forces
intensified in Pakistan's volatile northwest.
Militants kidnapped eight police and soldiers, and vowed to fight to the death, while hundreds of residents fled the fighting.
Officials could not immediately confirm reports that at least one of the hostages had been beheaded.
The two sides traded fire across the rushing Swat River using rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and other weapons, after security forces attacked the redoubt of the cleric Maulana Fazlullah, who runs a sprawling seminary in the village of Imam Dheri.
Two civilians were killed when stray bullets hit them near the river, while one of the militants also died in the gunbattle, said a police official in Swat.
Pakistan deployed 2,500 paramilitary troops to Swat this week to tackle the cleric, who leads a banned pro-Taliban group that sent thousands of volunteers to fight in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
The group has re-emerged this year in Swat and Malakand, another impoverished, conservative region next to the Afghan border.
As well as marshaling a band of armed militants, Fazlullah has used an FM radio station to campaign against girls' education and denounce a recent polio vaccination drive as a Western plot to sterilise Muslim children.
On Thursday, a suicide car bomber hit a truck carrying Frontier Constabulary paramilitary troops through a crowded area of Mingora, the main town in Swat district, killing 19 soldiers and a civilian, and wounding 35.
The devastating attack underlined the worsening security situation in Pakistan, particularly in the conservative region near the border with Afghanistan where militants linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida increasingly hold sway.
The Mingora blast came a week after the bloody assassination attempt in the southern city of Karachi on ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who plans to start travelling around Pakistan on Saturday.
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