KHAR (Agencies) - Troops Wednesday killed 49 militants, including foreign fighters, near the troubled Afghan border amid an upsurge in Taliban-inspired bloodshed, security officials said. Military spokesman Maj Murad Khan said troops poured gun and artillery fire onto militants holed up in a health centre in the Bajaur region, a hub of Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, adding that up to 30 militants were killed and that they included several foreigners. He didn't identify the casualties further. He said no troops were hurt. "Security forces killed 25-30 militants, including some important commanders and foreigners in Bajaur's Raghan region," a security official told AFP. In another clash, helicopter gunships pounded militant hideouts on Wednesday in a different part of Bajaur bordering Afghanistan, killing eight rebels and wounding 12 others, a separate security official said. The forces moved into Bajaur earlier this month. In the most dramatic incident Wednesday, the military said between 75 and 100 militants assailed a military fort in the South Waziristan region at about midnight Tuesday. Troops guarding Tiarza Fort and a checkpoint on a nearby bridge "responded effectively and repulsed the attack," a military statement said. It said 11 militants died and between 15-20 were wounded in the gunbattle. It made no mention of any casualties among the troops. The tribal regions have been wracked by violence since hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda rebels fled there after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. Suspected militant hideouts in the region have been targeted in a stream of suspected US missile attacks, including one that killed a senior al-Qaeda commander in July. Aminullah Wazir, a shopkeeper in Wana, the region's main town, said security forces imposed a curfew in the area Wednesday. Shops were shut and the streets deserted, he said. "We heard shelling and gunfire almost all night," Wazir said. Officials say hundreds of militants have died in a weeks-old offensive in Bajaur, while residents say civilians have also been killed in incidents including mortar strikes on their homes. An estimated 200,000 people have fled to safer areas.