WANA/KARACHI, 15 September 2004 — Several people were killed yesterday as security forces clashed with Al-Qaeda suspects in a tribal area bordering Afghanistan, local officials said.

“The dead included five militants,” an administration official said requesting anonymity. The exchange of fire erupted after militants perched on surrounding hills attacked soldiers in the Makin area, 60 kilometers north of Wana, he said.

Militants also attacked a military convoy in the nearby Sarvakai area, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said. “Security forces have cordoned off the area after firing on the convoy and a search for militants was going on,” Sultan told the private Geo television channel. He gave no details of casualties.

Residents said helicopters pounded suspected hide-outs of militants in the area, causing an unknown number of casualties.

Earlier militants fired rockets at a military post near the Afghan border, killing one paramilitary and injuring two others, officials said. “One paramilitary employee died while two others were injured when two rockets landed,” one official said.

Troops returned fire and targeted the suspected hide-outs of the militants, he said. Residents said a student was injured during the cross-fire.

Officials also said security forces had besieged a madrasa on suspicion foreign militants were hiding there.

Imran Khan Shabikhel told Reuters his relatives came under fire on Monday afternoon while trying to escape from a town in the troubled South Waziristan tribal area.

“Yesterday, we left Makin and came under fire while crossing a dry ravine,” he said. “The fire came from the ground and the air,” said Shabikhel, a student who lives in Makin. His relative, Mohammad Fazal, was being treated in hospital in Dera Ismail Khan.

He said he was in a group of about 30 people, including women and children, who were fleeing the region due to fears of fighting when government forces opened fire. “The injured and the dead lay there for some time. We asked the security forces to allow us to bury the dead and then they allowed us to go,” he said.

Meanwhile, four Ahmadzai Wazir sub-tribes in South Waziristan have reached an agreement with the government pledging not to provide shelter to foreigners and to hand over wanted militants to the authorities.

This accord was signed between Frontier Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah and some 200 leaders of Tojikhel, Khojalkhel, Kakakhel and Sarkikhel sub-tribes.

Elders in the tense North Waziristan tribal region yesterday torched an influential tribesman’s home days after authorities accused him of sheltering foreign militants, an official said. But the suspect had already left when the elders burned his house under a tribal law that forbids sheltering terror suspects.

Parliament Rejects Debate on Army Action in Tribal Areas

The Parliament yesterday rejected an opposition demand for debate on the ongoing military operation against Al-Qaeda-linked militants in tribal areas.

Lower house Speaker Chauhdry Ameer Hussain ruled “out of order” several motions tabled by opposition MPs from religious and secular parties. Opposition parties charged that civilians, including women and children, were being killed during the offensive in troubled South Waziristan district.

“Not only Muslims, but Pakistanis are being killed,” said Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, parliamentary leader of exiled former Premier Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N.

Pakistani jets bombed a suspected terrorist camp near South Waziristan’s main town of Wana on Thursday killing at least 50 people, mostly Uzbeks and Chechens, as well as some Arab fighters, the military said while locals claimed the victims were fellow tribesmen. Pakistani forces have conducted several operations in the area to tame fiercely independent tribesmen sympathetic to Afghanistan’s ousted Taleban militia.

The Parliament also passed a bill tightening controls on the export of nuclear and biological weapons technology and missile delivery systems, part of efforts to curb proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The National Assembly, Parliament’s lower house, adopted the bill on export controls on nuclear and biological weapons and their delivery systems.

“This law provides a framework to deal with sensitive technologies and proliferation,” State Minister for Foreign Affairs Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar told the assembly.

“Pakistan respects its international obligations as a nuclear-capable state. This bill will further enhance Pakistan’s image as a responsible nuclear state.” The Senate, or upper house, is expected to pass the bill later this week, before it is formally signed into law by President Pervez Musharraf.