Pakistani police announced March 17 that they killed five militants in the district of Kohistan, in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The militants (along with a police officer and two civilians) were killed in a gun battle after Pakistani security personnel encircled the house where they were hiding. Two of the individuals are considered high-value targets: Bakht Farzand and Mian Gul, both of whom were connected to militant leader Maulana Fazlullah . Rewards amounting to $177,000 each had been offered for information on the men's whereabouts since May 2009. The militants likely belonged to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Swat, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban that was the target of an intensive Pakistani counterinsurgency operation in May 2009 . As with other Pakistani military operations since then, the measure of success was not necessarily whether the military could clear the targeted area but whether it could hold it .