WANA/PESHAWAR, Aug 5: Seven people died and three others suffered injuries in a heavy exchange of fire between security forces and militants following an ambush on a convoy in the Shakai area of South Waziristan on Wednesday night in which four troops were killed , residents and unofficial reports said.

The convoy was on its way from Shakai to Khamrang, close to the Afghan border, when militants ambushed it with rockets and machine-guns, witnesses said. ISPR chief Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan denied there was any death on the military side.

"Some soldiers have been wounded during the attack near Shakai, but there is no killing on the army side," he told Dawn by phone from Islamabad. Witnesses in Wana said that they had seen bodies of four soldiers while six others had been brought in wounded condition.

Official sources said that the military had secured the Khamrang valley from militants last month after heavy clashes and air strikes. The Frontier Corps had since established its posts in the area, they added.

The security forces responded the ambush with artillery fire from the Brigade Headquarters at Zarai Noor colony and the Wana scouts camp, targeting the suspected hideouts of militants.

Residents said there was a heavy exchange of fire between security forces and militants that throughout the night. Gunship helicopters kept hovering over the troubled areas, they added.

Reports said that artillery and mortar shells hit the houses of Malik Nandar Khan and Baota Khan in the Shakai valley. Malik Nandar Khan and Baota Khan's 16-year-old daughter and a 14-year- old nephew were killed. Shells hit another house in the same locality, killing a woman, a girl and two boys.

The names of those killed could not be ascertained. Three wounded tribesmen, one of them in serious condition, were brought to the agency headquarters hospital in Wana, doctors said.

The ISPR director-general denied that civilians had been killed due to the troops' firing. "Security forces fired very precisely. Forces avoid aerial firing and we do not think it has happened due to military action," he said, adding that miscreants had fired 'free flight' rockets and missiles which had mostly hit the civilian population.

AHMADZAI TRIBE: Meanwhile, elders of the Ahmadzai tribe and a 36-member committee, constituted by the political administration, again failed to resolve their differences.