MIRAMSHAH, Sept 16: Seven battalions of regular troops backed by helicopters moved to Pakistan-Afghanistan border on Friday, officials said. Some 5,000 fresh troops left a military base in Miramshah, the North Waziristan Agency’s headquarters, and headed towards the border.

The fresh movement is part of the armed forces’ plan to deploy about 10,000 additional troops along the Afghan border to stop infiltration of unwanted elements before the Afghan parliamentary elections to be held on Sept 18.

Corps Commander Peshawar Lt-Gen Safdar Hussain and other senior military commanders visited Miramshah to review the security situation in the region. An official said that additional forces were being deployed in Ghulam Khan and other areas, which border Afghanistan’s Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces.

He said that helicopter gunships and transport helicopters had been dispatched and troops ordered to secure the border. Meanwhile, miscreants fired missiles on a military camp in Miramshah on Thursday night, where security forces have besieged a large number of residential compounds and a seminary of Commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, the former senior Taliban minister.

Officials said that three vehicles were damaged when one missile hit a parking area inside Touchi Scout Fort while another missile hit boundary wall of a vocational training centre.

Unidentified assailants fired four missiles from different directions in the area close to the Afghan border. However, the attack did not cause any casualty.

The security forces have surrounded a large number of mud-houses and a seminary in Dandi Derpakhel, west of Miramshah.

APP adds: Additional contingents of army on Friday took positions to seal the border. The army has established 761 posts over a stretch of 600 kilometres of the border, according to an ISPR press release.