PESHAWAR, Pakistan, March 1, (AFP): A Taleban commander has been killed in a clash with security forces in Pakistan’s Swat valley, where the military claims to have quelled an Islamist uprising, officials said Monday.
Mohammad Alam Binouri, who had a 10-million-rupee ($117,000) reward on his head, was killed in the gun battle in Madyan town in the mountainous northwestern region late Sunday, local police officer Islam Jan said.
Army and paramilitary soldiers acting on a tip-off surrounded a house in the town, but Binouri and another militant were killed in an exchange of fire, a military official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP.

“The bodies of the insurgents were placed in the main bazaar of Madyan, where the residents identified the pair,” said the police officer, Jan. He said Binouri was a close aide of fugitive Swat Taleban commander Maulana Fazlullah.
Binouri was killed along with fellow-commander Shankoo Mullah, while three other wounded militants were captured alive, the military official said.
The bodies were taken to Swat’s main town Mingora, where the wounded insurgents are being interrogated.
The picturesque Swat valley slipped out of government control after the radical cleric Fazlullah led an uprising in July 2007, beheading opponents, burning schools and fighting to enforce a harsh brand of Islamic law.

Pakistan launched a blistering air and ground offensive in the valley after militants marched out of Swat and advanced to within 100 kms (60 miles) of the capital Islamabad in April 2009.
The army says the area is now safe and most of the two million people who fled their homes have returned, but sporadic outbreaks of violence continue, while some fear the Swat Taleban are regrouping elsewhere in the northwest.
Fazlullah, who has a 50-million-rupee bounty on his head, remains at large.
Meanwhile, suspected Islamist militants armed with guns and rockets on Monday blew up a tanker carrying fuel through Pakistan for NATO troops based in neighbouring Afghanistan, police said.
Several armed men lobbed a rocket and then opened fire on the supply convoy on the outskirts of Pakistan’s northwestern city Peshawar, senior police officer Imtiaz Ahmed said.

“The attack triggered a huge fire and destroyed one tanker. Its driver escaped unhurt but his helper was wounded,” he said.
In a subsequent exchange of fire lasting up to an hour, Pakistani security forces killed a militant, another police officer Karim Khan said.
Police did not immediately identify the assailants, but the Taleban and members of local militant group Lashkar-e-Islam regularly attack NATO supply vehicles on the main route through northwest Pakistan.
Lashkar-e-Islam is active in the lawless region of Khyber, which is just outside Peshawar and part of Pakistan’s tribal belt snaking along the Afghan border that Washington has branded the headquarters of Al-Qaeda leaders.
About 80 percent of supplies destined for the 121,000 US and NATO troops in landlocked Afghanistan pass through Pakistan.
US officials consider northwest Pakistan a haven for Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants who fled the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan to regroup and launch attacks on foreign troops across the border.