Report: US Commanders to Expand Raids in Pakistan

A new report discloses that US commanders in Afghanistan are preparing to go ahead with a plan to expand ground operations into tribal areas of Pakistan.

Citing unnamed Washington officials, The New York Times said that the proposal would escalate special operations in Pakistan, opening a new front in the Afghan war.

The proposal "would escalate military activities inside Pakistan, where the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash," it said.

The report comes only days after Washington employed a new strategy for the Afghan war. The paper added that the new proposal is waiting for approval from US President Barack Obama.

"The decision to expand American military activity in Pakistan ... would amount to the opening of a new front in the nine-year-old war," said the report.

The US has almost doubled CIA-operated attacks, with over 100 non-UN-sanctioned strikes reported in 2010. The escalation comes despite protests by Pakistani officials that the drone attacks mainly lead to civilian casualties.

On Sunday, US Vice President Joe Biden suggested that the US is seeking to increase its presence in Pakistan because militants are trying to "bring down" the Islamabad government. The remarks come days after Obama blamed Pakistan for not doing enough to fight terrorism in its troubled northwestern tribal belt along the Afghan border.

More than 250 people have been killed in a total of 49 drone attacks the US has launched since September 3. The victims of the attacks have been mostly civilians.