Six militants killed before Bajaur truce

In the Monday attack troops fired four rounds which hit a house in the Inayat Killi area, eight kilometres northeast of Khar, the main town in the restive Bajaur tribal district.

"The mortars hit a house killing two people," local administration official Shafirullah Khan said.

A Frontier Corps official confirmed the incident and said the people killed were civilians, adding that their deaths were an accident.

Talkling to reporters in Islamabad,  Advisor to PM on Interior Affairs said outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan is "an extension of Al-Qaeda" and the organisations have close ties, a government official said Monday.

"We have certain evidence that there is a close connection, links and that there are similarities between Al-Qaeda and TTP," Advisor to PM on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik told reporters in Islamabad.

Asked if Al-Qaeda's deputy chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri is directly or indirectly talking to the TTP, Malik said, "If Al-Qaeda is to move in a tribal area, they have to look to the TTP to get a refuge."

"The TTP is a host to Al-Qaeda and is their mouthpiece," Malik said, adding that there was evidence that foreign fighters are operating in Pakistan.

"We have also found traces of militants from the Uzbek and... Chinese Islamic movements in the tribal regions," he said.

Malik said that authorities also received a report that al-Zawahri's wife had been in the tribal region of Mohmand.

Pakistani forces stormed the location but didn't find the couple, he said, without indicating when the raid took place. He said al-Zawahri moved between Mohmand and the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Paktika.

Malik accused the Afghan government of "inefficiency" for letting many of the estimated 3,000 militants who had gathered in Bajaur flee over the frontier.

Taliban spokesman Maulvi Umar, who Maj Abbas claimed had been put to flight, was still able to tell a foreign news agency by telephone that he welcomed the lull in fighting.

However, he said militants would not lay down their arms as demanded.

Sgt Christopher Peavy, a spokesman for US-led forces in Afghanistan, said that while it was too soon to tell if infiltration had decreased, "we are encouraged by the operations that Pakistan's military is conducting."