Pak troops mop up tribal belt operation

Another 10 fighters, mostly foreigners, died in clashes with government troops on Thursday, making it one of the bloodiest attacks on al-Qaeda-linked mili|ants since Pakistan sent tens of thousands of troops into lawless tribal areas last year.

Military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said no high-level al-Qaeda operatives had been killed in the raid involving jet fighters and helicopter gunships.

Speaking to reporters in the northwestern city of Peshawar, he also denied residents' reports that dozens of civilians died in the attacks.

"I am giving you an explicit statement that there were no civilian casualties, including women and children," he said.

Six bodies were recovered from the separate gun battle on Thursday, five of them foreigners. The remains of one local man were returned to Pakistani tribesmen, many of whom sympathize with al-Qaeda and have fought to protect them in recent clashes.

Most of the 50 militants killed in the training camp were foreigners, including Uzbeks, Chechens, and Arabs, Sultan said.

He added that the military had suffered casualties during the fighting, but declined to give details. The authorities have been slow to admit losses among forces in the past.

Islamic militants are outraged by Pakistan's decision to support the US-led war on terror, and al-Qaeda-linked opera|ives have been blamed for failed assassination attempts on the president, prime minister and a corps commander in Karachi.

Officials say members of the group behind the Karachi attack trained and planned in tribal areas, and some al-Qaeda operatives caught during a swoop on the network in recent months also visited the region.

Sultan described the site targeted on Thursday, in Dila Khura 15 miles northeast of the town of Wana, as a training camp where foreign militants were actively engaged in learning how to use weapons and make bombs using electronic circuits.

Authorities were led to the camp on the basis of information received from around 10 al Qaeda suspects who authorities say were planning a series of bomb attacks in major cities close to independence day on August 14. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told reporters in Karachi that 150 to 300 foreign militants remained in the South Waziristan tribal region 250 miles southwest of the capital Islamabad.

He repeated a government offer of amnesty by which foreign fighters, some of whom fled Afghanistan when the US launched its war on the Taliban in 2001, could register with the authorities and go fzee if they deno}nced militancy.