Six militants killed before Bajaur truce

Our Monitoring Desk adds: At least nine persons were killed and 52 injured during the operation being carried out by security forces in Darra Adamkhel, reported a private TV channel on Monday.

The security forces used gunship helicopters and heavy artillery to target suspected hideouts of militants.

Both sides claimed inflicting heavy losses on each other, but there was no official confirmation of this.

Meanwhile, the Khasadar force has arrested two persons in Tehsil Landi Kotal of Khyber Agency and recovered 12 mortar shells from their possession.

Hangu police on the other hand while defusing a bomb weighed 65 kilogram with the help of PDF foiled a terrorism bid. The 65 kg bomb was attached to a cylinder and the police were informed by some children.

Our Monitoring Desk adds: Seven security personnel were on Monday killed when Taliban militants ambushed their vehicle near a strategic tunnel in the troubled North West Frontier Province, reports NDTV. The security personnel were moving from a camp to the posts they had established in mountains near the Kohat tunnel when they were ambushed and killed by the militants, TV channels have reported.

The incident came days after Taliban suicide bombers unsuccessfully attempted to target an army camp near the tunnel which links the Peshawar in NWFP to other parts of the province. Following this, the security forces launched an operation against the militants in the area.





Agencies - Pakistan's Army claimed Monday to have routed Taliban militants in a stronghold near the Afghan border but turned up no sign of Osama bin Laden or Al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.

Officials said Monday, however, that their forces had killed some 560 Pakistani and foreign fighters and thwarted a push to make Bajaur into a militant fortress.

Army spokesman Maj-Gen Athar Abbas said about 20 members of the security forces died and 30 were missing.

"In our view, the back has been broken," army Spokesman Maj Abbas told an American news agency. "Main leaders are on the run and the people of the area are now openly defying whatever the militants had achieved there."

Maj Abbas said many foreigners were reportedly in Bajaur before the operation, but that many had probably fled to Afghanistan or other parts of Pakistan's northwest and that the operation had turned up no trace of the Al-Qaeda chiefs.