KHYBER AGENCY: Bodies of 20 suspected militants were recovered from Bara tehsil of Khyber tribal region on Thursday who officials said were killed during a Pakistan military assault on militants last week.

Assistant Political Agent Bara Tehsil Nasir Khan told Dawn.com that the suspected militants were killed in the Kharmatung area of Bara on the border of Frontier Region Dara Adamkhel.

Codenamed Khyber-2, the operation involving helicopter gunships and Frontier Corps ground troops was launched against Taliban hideouts in Zawa and Khurmatung areas of Akkakhel in Bara on Friday after insurgents bombed a checkpost of the security forces, killing two Frontier Corps personnel.

At least four FC personnel and 15 Taliban were reported to have been killed during in the operation. Other reports had put the militant death toll at 22.

Khan said that two of the dead found Thursday were identified as residents of Kurram Agency, while post-mortem was being conducted to ascertain the identities of the remaining.

The military sources also said the suspected militants had been killed in the military operation in Kharmatung and belonged to various militants groups.

Speaking to reporters on telephone from an undisclosed location, a spokesman for the banned Lahskar-i-Islam, Abdul Rashid Lashary said the men did not belong to the banned militant organisation, but they may belong to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or its Dara Adamkhel faction.

Sources said that the majority of these militants belonged to Orakzai, Khyber, South Waziristan tribal regions, while some had joined militant groups from settled districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Khyber is among Pakistan’s seven semi-autonomous tribal districts near the Afghan border, rife with homegrown insurgents and home to religious extremist organisations including the Al Qaeda.

The plains of Bara hold strategic significance for militant groups as they connect the agency to the outskirts of Peshawar.

The area was being used by militants to put pressure on the provincial capital. In recent weeks, police and military posts in and around Peshawar have come under attack.

The key area also straddles the Nato supply line into Afghanistan, used by US-led troops to evacuate military equipment ahead of their 2014 withdrawal.

Khyber also links several agencies to each other, serving as a north-south route within Fata. The region has been long fought over by a mix of militant organisations, including the TTP, the Ansarul Islam and Mangal Bagh’s Lashkar-i-Islam.