Guantanamo Ex-Inmate Still at Large

The Pakistani army has demolished several terrorist hide-outs and killed at least 30 militants, but failed to capture a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner accused of targeting security forces in a tense tribal region, military officials said Saturday.

The troops took control of some militant strongholds and seized a weapons cache in the assault last week in South Waziristan to capture foreign fighters and Pakistani militant leader Abdullah Mehsud, said Maj. Gen. Niaz Khatak, the army’s field commander.

Khatak said the troops “killed an estimated 30 to 40 militants in the areas of Mehsud,” and the operation was continuing.

Mehsud is accused of organizing the kidnapping last month of two Chinese engineers in the tribal region near Afghanistan, where they had been building a dam. One of the Chinese men was killed and the other rescued when commandos raided a home in South Waziristan. All five hostage-takers were killed.

Mehsud, 28, was freed in March after about two years of detention at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

After returning to Pakistan, he emerged as a rebel leader, opposing Pakistan’s army as it hunts foreign militants and their supporters in the country’s semiautonomous tribal regions.