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Fierce battles claim 34
18/07/2007 16:13 - (SA)
Miranshah - Pakistani soldiers fought fierce gunbattles with militants after two separate ambushes near the Afghan border, leaving 17 troops dead and at least the same number of rebels, the army said.
The clashes in the North Waziristan tribal region came as President Pervez Musharraf said Pakistan was in "direct confrontation" with extremists who have launched a wave of attacks since a government raid on an Islamabad mosque.
In the first attack, insurgents fired rockets at a military convoy and then opened fire with automatic weapons near the village of Lwara Mundi, said chief military spokesperson Waheed Arshad.
"Seventeen soldiers were martyred and more than a dozen miscreants were also killed when troops returned fire," said Arshad.
"Initial reports say that the fighting was heavy," a senior security official based in the area said.
A landmine exploded
The mountainous area where the ambush took place is near where Pakistani forces earlier this year erected the first 35km stretch of a controversial anti-Taliban fence along the border with Afghanistan.
About six hours later another clash erupted after militants attacked troops in Mir Ali, about 50km away in the same region. Five rebels were killed and there were no military casualties, Arshad said.
In other violence overnight a roadside bomb blast in North Waziristan injured six civilians and a soldier.
Separately a landmine exploded overnight outside the home of politician Mohammad Ajmal Khan, who served as federal sports minister in the 1990s, in Miranshah, the main town in the tribal area.
The blast destroyed his front gate but caused no casualties, officials said.
Pro-Taliban militants in North Waziristan on Sunday tore up a controversial 10-month-old peace deal with the government, further fuelling tensions after last week's assault on the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad.
Attacker brought carnage
On Tuesday a suicide blast in North Waziristan killed three soldiers and a civilian, while another suicide attack in the capital killed at least 15 people.
On Saturday a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed car into a paramilitary convoy in North Waziristan, leaving 24 dead and scores wounded.
Early Sunday, two suicide car bombers struck another convoy in the Swat Valley of North West Frontier Province - home to militants with links to the Red Mosque - killing 12 security personnel and five civilians.
Later that day another attacker brought carnage to a police recruitment centre in the same province, killing at least 26 police officials and recruits when he set off a load of explosives strapped to his body.
Hundreds of al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels took shelter in the tribal belt after US-led forces toppled Afghanistan's Taliban regime in late 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
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