ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has paid out the equivalent of nearly $120,000 over the arrest of a lieutenant of the country’s Taliban warlord ahead of a major Muslim festival, the military said yesterday.

It is the first time Pakistan has announced the payment of a reward since it offered five million dollars for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of Hakimullah Mehsud and 18 lieutenants.

“Security forces have arrested wanted terrorist Abdullah Shah Mehsud” in the northwestern town of Tank. “He had a head money of 10 million rupees,” the military said in a statement. “The head money has been paid to the informer.”

Shah Mehsud was number 17 on a list of wanted militants released on November 2 that carried rewards of between 10 and 50 million rupees for the leadership of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. TTP has been blamed for some of the worst attacks that have killed more than 2,550 people in a wave of carnage in the last 29 months in Pakistan. Around 2,000 troops have died fighting Islamist militants since 2002.

Pakistani paramilitary and army soldiers are pursuing a major offensive against TTP strongholds in South Waziristan, part of a tribal belt where US officials say Al-Qaeda fighters are plotting attacks on the West.

Violence has surged in Pakistan since the military launched the air and ground assault on October 17. Six militants were killed yesterday during an encounter with Pakistani troops in the Mamray area of Khyber, the tribal district which straddles the main Nato supply line into Afghanistan.