MIRAMSHAH, March 10: An army officer and three militants were killed and two soldiers wounded in a gunbattle in Dwa Toi area of North Waziristan on Saturday, official sources said.
Local people said that helicopters had also been called in to assist ground forces in the ensuing operation and security forces destroyed one vehicle loaded with arms and ammunition.
Tension also gripped Miramshah, the headquarters of the restive area, where paramilitary forces’ headquarters came under mortar attack on Thursday.
A press release of the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) said on Saturday that security forces had launched a search operation to track down the two vehicles that managed to escape after the encounter.
The press release said that the three vehicles coming from the Afghan side approached Dwa Toi checkpoint in Datakhel tehsil, about 45 kilometres west of Miramshah, at about 1pm and security forces signalled them to stop.
The armed men ignored the signal and opened fire on the security personnel.
In the ensuing encounter one junior commissioned officer, Muhammad Ilyas, and three miscreants were killed and two soldiers wounded.
One vehicle caught fire during the exchange of fire but two other vehicles escaped.
Meanwhile, six mortar shells fired from the Afghan side landed near Ghulam Khan checkpoint on Saturday, officials said. They said that the attack did not cause any casualties or damage. Pakistani border forces did not retaliate.
Agencies add: The Waziristan region is a hotbed of pro-Taliban militants supporting a bloody insurgency in Afghanistan against the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
Being a key ally of the United States in its war on terror, Pakistan has deployed about 80,000 troops in its tribal regions bordering Afghanistan to search for foreign and local militants who are believed to be hiding there
The government struck a controversial peace pact in North Waziristan, a hotbed of Al Qaeda and Taliban support, last September. The deal was aimed at ending fighting between militants and security forces and stopping raids into Afghanistan.
Hundreds of people have been killed in clashes but the fighting has fallen off sharply in North Waziristan since the September pact.
Hundreds of Al Qaeda and Taliban militants fled into the country’s semi-autonomous tribal lands near the Afghan border and found sanctuary there after US-led forces ousted Afghanistan's Taliban regime in 2001.
