MIRAMSHAH, Oct 8: The military lost another 25 soldiers in fierce clashes with militants in North Waziristan on Monday, pushing the death toll, on the army’s side, to 45 since Sunday. The chief of the Inter Services Public Relations put the toll on the militants’ side at 60.

And according to the locals, 55 civilians, among them women and children, were killed and 40 others wounded in Sunday’s air strikes and clashes between security forces and militants in Mirali tehsil. They alleged that jet fighters had carried out extensive bombings in Hasu Khel village on Monday.

According to an ISPR press release, about 50 soldiers were believed to have gone missing in action.

A Western news agency quoted the ISPR as having said the army had killed 130 militants since Sunday in some of the heaviest-ever clashes near the Afghan border. He said the militants were unusually well-trained and were getting support from Afghanistan.

Malik Sher Khan, an agency councillor, told Dawn that bodies of 50 security personnel had been handed over to the political authorities on Monday.

Bodies of 14 security personnel were found in Hasu Khel.

The number of casualties on both sides and the magnitude of destruction could not be verified from independent sources in the region.

Militants’ spokesman Ahmadullah Ahmadi claimed that over 60 soldiers had been killed while 11 vehicles had been destroyed and five captured. He claimed that troops had suffered massive casualties in Khushali and Eidak villages. Residents accused the security forces of imposing an undeclared curfew on Mirali town, saying that all roads in the area remained cordoned off.

Security forces shot dead two people as they were leaving a mosque in the town, witnesses alleged.

They said the ‘curfew’ was relaxed only for two hours in order to facilitate stranded shopkeepers and consumers to leave the town. Security forces had laid siege to the town on Sunday.

The locals said a large number of houses had been damaged in Mosaki, Haiderkhel, Khadi, Hasu Khel, Milagan and Khushali Toorikhel villages after intense shelling and bombing. Most of the victims were women and children, they added.

Sher Khan, an agency councillor living near a paramilitary camp in Mirali town, lost 12 members of his family when several bombs fell on his house. Eighteen bodies were retrieved from the rubble in Hasu Khel village.

Sources said that security forces had blocked roads at Khajuri, Ghulam Khan, Datakhel, Eisha and Razmak check-posts, refusing to allow locals to shift the wounded to hospitals in Miramshah or Bannu.

The clashes between security forces and militants have forced terrified residents to leave the territory for safer places.

In Miramshah, shopkeepers kept shops shuttered after tension gripped the agency headquarters in the wake of the bloodshed in Mirali.

A tribal jirga, headed by Malik Mohammad Alam, failed to hold negotiations with the militants as the latter turned down a request to vacate their positions.

ISPR CHIEF: Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the ISPR chief, said of the 50 missing soldiers, the army had managed to establish contacts with 30.