PESHAWAR, March 16: Pitched battles between hundreds of troops and suspected militants in the remote South Waziristan tribal region on Tuesday left at least 14 paramilitary soldiers and 24 suspected militants dead and scores of others wounded, official sources said.

At least 18 paramilitary troops were missing and it was not immediately clear whether they also had been killed in the day- long battles and ambushes, the sources said.

Two tehsildars of the local administration were also missing. "They are counting the heads," said one senior official in Peshawar late in the evening. "They are searching for their men and we don't know whether they are dead, wounded or have been captured by suspected militants," the sources said.

The battles described by officials in the volatile tribal region as the bloodiest in the hunt for Al Qaeda militants, raged for hours with the two sides exchanging heavy gunfire, mortars and rockets.

The militants, who according to officials and eyewitnesses numbered 400 to 500, fought 700 troops from the Frontier Corps's South Waziristan Scouts and Tall Scouts with marked professionalism.

An official reached on phone in the regional headquarters in Wana said: "They fought like professional, trained people. The way they were firing on our troops, lobbing grenades and shooting rockets, jumping from one place to another and changing positions has taken us by surprise," he said.

The Inter Services Public Relations which had earlier in the day put the death toll at seven, including four soldiers and three suspected militants, later avoided to give any update.

"We are not issuing any statement, the area comes under the purview of the tribal administration and they will issue a statement in due course," ISPR spokesman Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan told Dawn on phone from Rawalpindi. A late-night statement from the Governor's Secretariat, Fata, however, put the total casualty figure at eight soldiers dead and 15 wounded.

Twenty-four foreigners and their local protectors were also killed in the encounter, said the short statement. "The bodies of only two foreign elements have been recovered," it said.

But official sources in Wana claimed that 19 of the 24 killed in clashes with paramilitary forces were foreigners. "They have distinctive features. They don't look like locals. They either look to be Chechens or Central Asians," said one official.

President Gen Pervez Musharraf had warned tribesmen at a grand Jirga in Peshawar on Monday of serious repercussions if the operation against foreign militants failed.

He had put the figure of foreign militants in South Waziristan at between 500 and 600. Officials said that hundreds of paramilitary soldiers had moved to Kaloosha, a village about 15km west of Wana, to capture Al Qaeda militants and their local protectors, including Nek Muhammad, Haji Sharif and his brother Noor Islam.

At night, suspected militants fired rockets and mortars into army brigade headquarters at Zari Noor killing four soldiers and wounding seven others. "The area was cordoned off at around 0500 hours and a search launched at around 6:30 hours," the official said.

The official said that the exchange of fire began when a double-cabin pick-up truck broke the cordon and escaped, braving hails of bullets. "What followed was unbelievable. Hundreds of people emerged from nowhere and began what was a ferocious resistance," the official said.

He said that scores of foreign militants were able to escape under the cover of gunfire by their tribal sympathizers. Credible official sources in Peshawar and local witnesses in Wana said the battle had become so intense that at one point armed tribesmen and suspected militants encircled the paramilitary troops in an area surrounded by apple orchards, shooting at them from virtually all directions. Also caught in the siege was the commandant of the paramilitary forces in Wana, Col Khalid Usman.

It was at Kaloosha where the paramilitary forces took their heaviest casualties, both dead and wounded. According to one account, 11 soldiers died in the fight at Kaloosha.

Suspected militants launched spectacular ambushes and hit paramilitary forces at different places. One foreign militant, believed to be Chechen, who was killed in action was holding a grenade and had seven anti-personnel mines strapped to his body, a security official said.

A convoy of paramilitary forces on way to the South Waziristan camp came under fire at Dabkot near Wana, the official said. Two soldiers were killed and 12 others were wounded in the attack.

Officials and local witnesses said the situation had become so desperate that the Frontier Corps had to call in the standby regular forces of the Pakistan Army from its brigade headquarters at Zari Noor near Wana.

A contingent of over 400 troops was immediately dispatched to the area to give cover to and help evacuate the encircled soldiers of the paramilitary forces.

Unconfirmed reports said that an army soldier was killed and two were wounded when their convoy came under attack near Zha Ghondai. The army shelled the house from where its forces had been attacked and took six people into custody.

Announcements made on loudspeakers in mosques by local religious leaders asked people to keep calm and a Jirga of local elders and clerics was dispatched to the area to bring about a truce. The Jirga too was caught in the fire and was held at a big mosque in Zha Ghondai.

All roads leading to the area were blocked and women and children were seen fleeing for safe locations, witnesses said. Officials and witnesses said that militants fired at or seized several trucks and vehicles belonging to the paramilitary forces.

Senior officials in Peshawar said that most of the troops had pulled back from the troubled area after sunset. Only a small detachment of army had been left to resume search for the missing people, said one official.

He said the authorities in Wana had been approached by suspected militants to try and negotiate a swap of their people with the soldiers being held captive by them.

"They have approached the authorities to negotiate an exchange of prisoners," said the official. A resident in Wana said that clerics were making frequent appeals to people to remain peaceful and come out to help bring about peace and arrest possible new clashes. "There is a lot of tension," said a Wana resident on phone. "Nobody knows what happens tomorrow."