PESHAWAR, March 21: The government has agreed to a temporary ceasefire on Monday to allow a group of tribal elders in the rugged South Waziristan tribal region to make a last-ditch effort to persuade local and foreign militants to surrender, a senior official said.

"There will be a kind of a temporary ceasefire. There will be no engagements, no artillery and no helicopter gunships. We will not engage unless our troops are fired upon," head of the security department in Fata, Brig. Mehmood Shah told Dawn.

He said the authorities in South Waziristan had issued security passes to 22 tribesmen from the Zalikhel tribe to let them go through the security cordon and approach militants holed up in the villages of Shin Warsak and Kaloosha, between 9km and 15km to the west of Wana, the regional headquarters.

The jirga of Zalikhels, the tribe which has borne the brunt of military operation for failing to surrender foreign militants and their local protectors, would enter the cordoned area holding white flags some time early in the morning for talks with the militants.

"They will go inside the area and find out who the leaders of the militants are and convey to them our demands," Brig. Shah said. He said the government had presented to them three demands: 12 missing paramilitary forces and two junior administration officers believed to be held hostage by the militants must be released unconditionally and immediately; local tribesmen accused of harbouring foreign militants must be handed over to the government; and all foreign militants in the area must surrender immediately.

"They are supposed to come back with an answer. If the tribal elders find that they are too weak to convince these people, then they will identify the targets and our forces will finish off the job," Brig Shah said.

The Zalikhels were persuaded to go and talk to the militants following mediation by a 50-plus jirga of all tribes from the seven tribal regions and adjoining Frontier Regions that visited Wana and held talks with the administration.

The Fata security chief said authorities were also planning to send an ambulance to retrieve bodies and get the wounded. "We are told that there are several bodies and many wounded people.

Bodies of those belonging to the local tribes would be handed over to their families for burial while those of foreign militants would be turned over to the military for identification," he said.

It is still not clear how many of those holed up in the targeted area have been killed or wounded but officials speculate the figure could be quite high. The army has so far withheld information regarding the number of casualties on its side but one official put the number of dead soldiers during the last six days at 17.

Brig. Shah said that two Chechens who had attempted to break the security cordon and flee were shot and killed by the military forces. Thousands of military and paramilitary forces have been battling what officials said 500 to 600 foreign militants and their local supporters since last Tuesday.

Brig. Shah said resistance from militants was dying down and wireless intercepts suggested that they were running out of ammunition. "We have intercepted communications which suggest that they are running out of ammunition", he said. He said that a house-to-house search was continuing from the western side of Kaloosha to the eastern side in Shin Warsak.

He added that forces operating in the area had demolished some houses from where they had been fired upon. "The search could wind up in a couple of days but the clean-up operation to flush out foreign militants from the area could last for about a month," he said.

During the search, the forces discovered tunnels in the house of one of the five tribal suspects, Noorul Islam. Brig Shah said that there had been no fresh arrests and investigators were trying to identify foreign militants from the over 100 suspects rounded up since the operation began on March 18.

In a related development, Mehsuds, the largest tribe in South Waziristan, have sent a separate jirga to Zalikhel Wazirs, the second largest tribe, to account for the death of their fellow tribesmen serving in the South Waziristan Scouts, the paramilitary force under the Frontier Corps operating in the tribal areas.

"The Mehsuds are asking the Waziris to account for the killing of their fellow tribesmen. The jirga is still on," the Fata security chief said. "This is being done in accordance with local riwaj (custom), Brig. Mehmood Shah explained at a news briefing earlier in the day.

Answering a question, he denied that 13 civilians had been killed in attacks by Cobra helicopter gunships. "There were no helicopters in the air at the time of the incident, around 4pm," he claimed.

He said that the civilians, mostly women and children travelling in vehicles, might have been hit by fire from militants from inside the cordon and not outside.

Reuters adds: The battle, involving 5,000 troops, is the biggest Pakistan has ever waged in its semi-autonomous tribal border lands and is part of a major push to sweep foreign militants from the region and catch Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

But anger is growing in the fiercely independent tribal region of South Waziristan, and 7,000 protesters gathered at a rally in one village on Sunday to demand troops be withdrawn.

In Islamabad, 70 Muslim clerics denounced the raid as unIslamic and issued a decree saying government soldiers killed in the operation had died as "infidels".

"Even their funerals are not legitimate under Islamic law," Qazi Abdual Aziz, the chief cleric at the capital's Red Mosque told a news conference. "Only those who killed in resistance against this operation are martyrs."

In Afghanistan, US troops have also stepped up their hunt in what they describe as a "hammer and anvil" operation with Pakistan. A senior US official said he was pleased with Pakistan's efforts "to run those terrorist rascals out of their territory and into Afghanistan".

"We have believed for a long time that we really need to work along the border," acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee said on a visit to Afghanistan. "That is where the centre of gravity is, we need to work both sides of it very hard and we need to do it together."

MILITANT LEADER: Pakistani commanders say they suspect a Uzbek or Chechen militant leader is among those surrounded in a series of well-established and well-defended mud-walled compounds.