LANDI KOTAL, March 19: Six people were killed and 26 others injured when security forces resorted to heavy fire and shelling after militants attacked an army base on Thursday evening.

Local people said the military base housing personnel of Pakistan Army and Khyber Rifles came under rocket attack from three directions.

All the dead and the injured were non-combatants.

Most of the victims were sitting in a godown on the Jamrud-Torkham Road.

Five people were injured when rockets and shells rained Gagra area.

At least 24 houses were damaged in the shelling.

This was the third attack on a military camp some seven kilometres away from the Pakistan-Afghan border near Torkham.

The area reverberated with heavy fire for several hours.

Troops had launched operation in the agency on Dec 28 and it was extended to Landi Kotal, near the border, in January.

A local militant Hazrat Ali, brother of a radical cleric Hazrat Nabi alias Tamanche Mullah, had accepted responsibility for the earlier attacks.

He is also suspected of involvement in attacks on container-trucks passing through the area while carrying goods for Nato forces in Afghanistan.
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