DIR, June 3: Militants described as Afghan Taliban on Friday again attacked the Shaltalo area of Upper Dir where dozens of security personnel and terrorists have died in three days of fierce fighting. However, the attack was repulsed.

According to officials and villagers in the area near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the local tribesmen played a major role in repulsing the cross-border attack. “We repulsed a fresh attack by the Taliban,” a man who took up arms to defend his village told .

He said the villagers had become fed up with the Taliban and were determined to defend their homes against attacks by outsiders.

Later, fresh contingents of Pakistan Army and Frontier Corps were deployed in the area. Local people said they had seen a large number of security personnel in their areas.

They said helicopter gunships shelled militant positions in Shateez and Nusrat Darra areas, both situated close to the border.

District Coordination Officer of the area, Ghulam Mohammad, confirmed that reinforcements had been sent to the border region. He said a search operation had been launched in several villages to clear them of militants.

Speaking to a jirga in Wari, Deputy Inspector General of police for Malakand region, Qazi Jameel, said local tribesmen would be allowed to keep arms to guard themselves against attacks. He said the police would be provided with better weapons.

The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack on the security post in Shaltalo, which indicated that the group was adopting a new strategy of carrying out large-scale attacks on government and army targets, according to Reuters.

In the pre-dawn raid on Wednesday in the Shaltalo village, up to 400 militants crossed over from Afghanistan to attack the post, Pakistani officials said. Twenty-seven security personnel were killed and 45 militants died in the clashes, the officials added.

However, a spokesman for the TTP, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said: “Up to 40 to 50 of our fighters took part in the operation. None of our fighters were killed.”