Pakistan moves on militants

Tensions are high between India and Pakistan

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) -- Pakistani police have sealed the offices of banned sectarian and Kashmiri militant groups, detaining scores of group leaders and activists, officials said.

Police in southern Sindh and southwestern Baluchistan provinces launched the operation overnight Saturday and Sunday against the groups after Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf said in a key speech that he had banned several militant or radical Islamic groups.

"We have sealed most of the offices of Sipah-e-Sahaba and Tehrik-e-Jafria in Sindh province ... like elsewhere in the country," said a Sindh police spokesman.

He said police met no resistance.

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The latest crackdown followed mass detentions earlier on Saturday, when at least 250 Islamic militant and radical sympathizers were taken into custody in a bid to pre-empt possible violent reaction to Musharraf's speech.

A senior police official in Hyderabad, 160 km (100 miles) northeast of the volatile port city of Karachi, said police had detained at least 70 activists of the Sunni Muslim Sipah-e-Sahaba and its Shi'ite rival Tehrik-e-Jafria Party (TJP) in night raids in various cities across Sindh.

The two groups have been blamed for waves of sectarian killings, bombings and shootings in Pakistan in recent years.

Musharraf, in his speech said in the past year 400 people had been killed due to sectarian violence and the situation had to end.

A pro-Taliban group, Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi, which helped provide Pakistani fighters from the tribal areas to Afghanistan's now-vanquished Taliban was also outlawed.

Musharraf also banned the two Pakistan-based pro-Kashmiri groups that New Delhi accused of a bloody attack on India's parliament on December 13, in which 14 people, including the five attackers, were killed.

Scores of leaders and activists from the two groups -- Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba -- have been detained in Pakistan over the past month.

India, demanding that Pakistan act against what it calls "cross-border terrorism" launched its biggest military build-up in 15 years, sparking similar moves from Pakistan.

An estimated million troops now face each other across the border separating the nuclear-capable rivals.