ISLAMABAD, March 25: Troops have arrested over 140 miscreants including locals and foreigners during the ongoing operation in South Waziristan, an Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) spokesman said on Thursday.

The spokesman said the search operation into the cordoned off area of Wana continued on Thursday without any resistance and no exchange of fire between the troops and miscreants had taken place.

He said the troops had recovered over the past few days a huge cache of arms and ammunition, which included 73 rifles, 12 small machine-guns, two heavy machine-guns, four time-bomb watches, three RPG-7, a huge quantity of mortar bombs, detonators, time-bombs, booby-trap explosives and hand-grenades.

Communication equipment which have been recovered include motorollas, walkie-talkie, long-range HF radio sets and a telephone exchange, the spokesman said. He said an underground tunnel had also been found within the cordoned off area.

He said the Jirga comprising 52 elders and Maliks from five tribal agencies was still in progress. The Maliks, he said, had different political affiliations but they unanimously asked Zalikhel tribe to satisfy the Jirga or face punitive action for supporting and sheltering miscreants.

Meanwhile, Mahsud tribe is carrying out a search of houses around Sarwaki area where an army convoy was fired upon a couple of days ago, the ISPR spokesman said. He said the tribe will be responsible for the safety of movements of security forces within their area of responsibility.