MIRAMSHAH, April 29: The army is in full control in the troubled region of Waziristan, where 324 militants have been killed in operations over the past nine months, officials said on Saturday.

Briefing journalists at the military headquarters in the town, the officials said that 39 ‘major operations’ had been conducted since July last year to flush out Al Qaeda-linked foreign and local militants.

Miramshah was the scene of fierce battles between pro-Taliban militants and the army in March which killed 145 militants, including 23 foreigners, chief military spokesman Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan said.

He said up to 1,500 militants had attacked Miramshah and described the March 4-8 clashes as the heaviest in the region, where hundreds of the Taliban and Al Qaeda militants are known to have sought refuge after fleeing Afghanistan.

In April near Miramshah, the military said it had killed senior Al Qaeda operative and explosives expert Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah, also known as Abdul Rehman al Muhajir, indicted in the United States over the 1998 twin embassy bombings in east Africa.

Maj-Gen Sultan, however, acknowledged that the body of the suspect had never been found.

“We have reasons to believe that he was among those six to eight foreigners who were killed in the attack. Although we do not have his body, intelligence reports indicate his presence so we believe he was killed,” he said.

He said a total of 76 foreign militants were among those killed in the operations while 56 soldiers had also been killed in the region since July 2005.

The officer in charge of the anti-militant operations in the area, Maj-Gen Akram Sahi insisted the army was in control in North Waziristan and said reports that the Taliban had taken over the area were ‘untrue’.

Maj-Gen Sultan, director-general of the Inter-Service Public Relations, said some 31,000 regular troops and 14,000 paramilitary soldiers were deployed in North Waziristan, which served as a base for Mujahideen during the 1979-89 war in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation.—AFP