PESHAWAR/WANA, June 16: A paramilitary soldier was killed and 10 others were injured, six of them seriously, in a fierce battle with foreign militants in Ludah, about 55km to the north of South Waziristan's regional headquarters Wana.

Two foreign militants, appeared to be Uzbeks, also died during the battle with security forces that lasted for well over five hours, officials and eyewitnesses told Dawn.

Fighting erupted at around 1.30am when foreign and local militants, said to number between 70 and 90, launched mortar and rocket attacks on the paramilitary fort in Ladah. The fort is home to over 500 paramilitary forces from the South Waziristan and Tall Scouts.

There is also a small contingent of about 50 soldiers from the regular Pakistan Army. Officials and witnesses said the militants fired dozens of mortars and rockets into the fort. "We lost the count, everybody was running for cover," said a paramilitary soldier.

The attack by militants appeared to be coordinated and planned, said an official. "This shows desperation on their part and that's why they are on the offensive now," a senior military analyst said.

The witnesses said it was a three-pronged attack with militants beginning the assault by firing an array of heavy weapons. "There was complete darkness. Nobody knew what was happening," said a witness.

A subaidar major, who was deputed at the post overlooking the fort, later told his colleagues that the militants had come very close to the security forces positions.

"The militants shouted Allah-o-Akbar before unleashing a barrage of rockets on the fort and the security forces picket," he said. The Army fired several rounds of flares to light up the sky and expose the militants' positions, the witness said.

Omar Gul Afridi, a soldier of the Tall Scout, who was firing at the militants from a vantage point, received a direct rocket hit and was killed instantly. The nine others wounded in the rocket attack were all inside the fort. Among them was a Maj Ghufran Shehzad.

All the wounded soldiers were later taken to Peshawar by military helicopters. The witness said a group of foreign militants holed up in a ditch were later surrounded and ordered to surrender.

"We saw two of them, both seemed wounded. We could see them with hands up and heard them shouting 'Musulmani, Musulmani," said the witness. He said Subaidar Major Fida Hussain, who had left his position to nab them, told his colleagues that he could not understand their language.

"By the time I got closer to them, I found one of them dead, while the other suddenly pulled out the safety pin of a hand-grenade and killed himself," the witness quoted Fida Hussain as saying. The subaidar major was also wounded in that encounter.

The witness said the battle switched from heavy weapons to light weapons and continued for another three hours until about 6am. "They were relentless," he said. He said the militants appeared to have taken some casualties but had managed to drag their dead and wounded with them while retreating from the area. "There were blood stains."

"The small Army detachment saved the day for us, otherwise the firepower and attack was so overwhelming that the Al Qaeda militants would have peeled our skins off," was candid remarks of a paramilitary soldier.

The authorities have cordoned off the area and closed down the road for all vehicular traffic. "There is a shoot-on-sight order," said one official. At around 4pm, the militants again engaged security forces at another checkpoint at Tarae Zhawar on the Ludah-Tiarza road.

"There was an exchange of fire, but no casualties from both sides," the official said. Earlier, suspected militants also fired rockets at the paramilitary fort in Serwekai and the military brigade headquarters in Ziari Noor earlier in the day, but there were no casualties. Meanwhile, a lashkar of Ahmadzai Wazir tribe burnt the house of a local militant, Javed Karmazkhel in Doog.