Pak tribesmen vow to oust US from region

Witnesses said up to 3,000 people, some brandishing assault rifles and some masked, turned up in the remote district of Azam Warsak, in South Waziristan tribal region, to offer prayers at the grave of militant leader Nek Mohammad.

Mohammad, a former Taliban commander, was killed in June last year after leading a bloody resistance to the Pakistan army's largest-ever offensive to drive-out al-Qaeda linked militants in South Waziristan. Pakistan's military said it killed the militant.

"We will complete the mission of our commander Nek Mohammad and we will continue our jihad (holy war) against the US forces in the region," militant leader Maulvi Abdul Aziz told the gathering amid shouts of "Allah-o-Akbar" (God is greatest).

Pakistan's tribal region bordering Afghanistan has long been suspected of providing refuge to hundreds of al-Qaeda-linked and Taliban militants who fled there after the ouster of the extremist Muslim Taliban regime by US-led forces in 2001.

Afghan and US government officials have said that Taliban militants hiding in the Pakistani tribal regions were conducting hit-and-run attacks on the US-led coalition and Afghan forces inside Afghanistan.

Since last year Pakistan, a key ally in what the US calls a war on terrorism, has conducted several major operations in its tribal regions. It says it has destroyed hideouts and training camps of militants linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network which claimed responsibility for attacks on the United States that killed about 3,000 people on September 11, 2001.

A US-led 18,000-strong coalition force is battling militants in Afghanistan's south and eastern provinces which border the Pakistani tribal belt, three years after the Taliban's ouster by a US-led military campaign.