Pakistani army helicopters fired on suspected al-Qaeda fighters in mountains near the Afghan border yesterday as government forces pressed on with a campaign to expel foreign militants.
Dozens of people have been killed in battles since Tuesday including 13 civilians, many of them women and children, who some officials said were killed in an attack on Saturday by a helicopter gunship.
Tribal elders called for a ceasefire to collect and bury the dead.
Pakistani commanders say they have surrounded several hundred foreign al-Qaeda supporters and their Pakistani tribal allies but doubt al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, is among them as some officials had suspected last week.
"First there was small-arms fire, perhaps targeting the helicopters," one witness near the fighting in Pakistan's rugged west said of yesterday's firing.
"Then the helicopters hit back. We heard loud explosions," he said.
Overnight attacks on the militants, who have been fiercely defending clusters of heavily fortified mud-walled compounds, were not as intense as the previous night, local residents said.
The army has sent tens of thousands of troops into its largely autonomous tribal lands on the Afghan border to root out foreign militants and hunt their leaders.
The offensive is the biggest Pakistan has waged since it joined the US-led war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US. Zawahri is believed to have been a key planner of those attacks.
Across the border in Afghanistan, US-led forces have launched a push against the resurgent Taliban militia and their al-Qaeda allies. The Pentagon is calling the twin offensives on either side of the border a "hammer and anvil" operation.
The military said the battle to the west of the town of Wana was just one step in their campaign, and fresh targets would be dealt with soon.
"The operation is continuing," said military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan.
The ferocity of the militants' defense when paramilitary forces moved into the area on Tuesday convinced some officials they were protecting a "high-value target," possibly Zawahri.
But the region's commander said on Saturday that intercepted rebel radio communications suggested the mystery militant leader was an Uzbek or a Chechen. Zawahri is Egyptian.
Villagers complain that for years they were told the foreign fighters who battled the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s were heroes of Islam, but now they're being told they are terrorists who must be hunted down.
More than 100 suspected militants have been captured since Tuesday. The army has thrown up a 60km cordon to box in rebels still at large.
But in an attack likely to inflame anger in the area, 13 civilians died on Saturday when their vehicles were fired on.
A senior security official said militants had fired on the vehicles but two local officials said an army helicopter had attacked them after troops came under fire.
The army urged civilians to get out of the area as the battle unfolded last week. Hundreds left. Now the army says anyone trying to break out of its cordon will be fired upon.
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