ISLAMABAD, 12 March 2006 — At least 30 foreign militants and their supporters were killed when the Pakistan Army artillery shelled a village near the country’s North Waziristan town of Miranshah, sources said yesterday.

The attack on Khattay Killay village, around 10 km from Miranshah, began late Friday, government sources were quoted by Geo TV as saying.

Gunship helicopters flying in pairs attacked a madrasa and an adjacent home in the village which belonged to local cleric Sadiq Noor who is wanted by the authorities for his suspected links with Taleban and Al-Qaeda fugitives.

Noor escaped a military operation in the area last September. It was not known whether Noor was at the madrasa when the attack took place.

A dry stream near the village where the militants had taken up positions was also shelled, according to the report. The military also recovered a huge cache of arms, certain important certificates and several passports.

The new operation against pro-Taleban suspects also blew up their ammunition dump and secondary explosions continued to echo in the area, near Miranshah in the troubled North Waziristan region, late into the night, chief military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said.

He said the attack was ordered after intelligence reports suggested that militants were gathered in a compound along with a huge cache of arms, ammunition and explosives.

“We got information that some local and foreign miscreants were hiding in the vicinity of Miranshah.

“We launched strikes with Cobra and other helicopters,” Sultan said.

“According to initial information, around 25 to 30 miscreants, including foreigners, have been killed,” he said. He did not give the nationalities of the slain foreigners.

Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao told Parliament the government launched the operation to establish its authority in the region.

Residents said people were engaged in retrieving bodies from the compound destroyed in the artillery shelling and air strikes.

Security officials in Miranshah said the death of at least three foreign militants had been confirmed so far and their nationalities were being determined.

Security forces, during recent operations in northwestern region, has killed over 120 terrorists and arrested nine, including foreigners.

Sherpao defended the military operations saying militants, backed by foreign criminals, were pushing to establish their own legal systems in the area. He made the comments in response to opposition charges that innocent civilians were killed in the operations. “There can’t be two governments in one state...we will not tolerate miscreants and we will sternly deal with them,” he told National Assembly, or Parliament’s lower house.

Noor and another cleric, Maulana Abdul Khaliq Haqqani, are wanted by authorities for harboring militants.

Sherpao said Abdul Khaliq last month publicly vowed to fight against law enforcement agencies, prompting militants to later storm and occupy a government building in the area. They also attacked paramilitary convoys and fired at a helicopter injuring the pilot, he said.

The tribal region bordering Afghanistan was also the scene of bloody battles last weekend during which over 120 militants and five soldiers were killed.

Last week’s fighting in North Waziristan, which coincided with US President George W. Bush’s March 4 visit to Islamabad, was described as the fiercest in a two-and-a-half-year campaign by Pakistani forces against suspected militants.

Hundreds of Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters have sneaked across the mountainous border in the past four years, finding support from tribesmen.

Pakistani forces have been trying to clear foreign militants from the area and subdue their Pakistani allies.