ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office of Pakistan expressed its surprise on Monday over the latest British demand that Pakistan should hunt Al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama Bin Laden’s second in command, Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

“We have eliminated about 7,000 pro-Al-Qaeda militants and Pakistan’s forces are still making extraordinary efforts to track down and eliminate militants,” said Foreign Office Spokesman Abdul Basit. “We ask the British government or other NATO powers to provide us intelligence reports that suggest a presence of Al-Qaeda elements. We totally deny these inaccurate reports that Al-Qaeda’s leaders are present in Pakistan.”

Interior Minister Rehman Malik also urged the British government to pass on any information about whereabouts of Bin Laden. “If anyone has information about the presence of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, then it must be shared with our government. We would take action,” he told reporters.

The statements came in response to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Sunday attacking the Pakistani leadership in exasperated tones, demanding that it “take out” Osama Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Zawahiri

“The Pakistan government has started to take on the Taleban and to take on Al-Qaeda in South Waziristan, but we have got to ask ourselves why, eight years after Sept. 11, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama Bin Laden, nobody has been able to get close to Zawahiri, the number two of Al-Qaeda,” Brown told BBC television.

Meanwhile, Pakistani security forces targeted militants fleeing a major army offensive close to the Afghan border on Monday, killing 10 of them, an army officer said.

Heavy artillery and helicopter gunships were used to hit suspected militants in Kurram district, said Maj. Fazlur Rehman, a spokesman for the paramilitary Frontier Corps. He said insurgents who had recently arrived in the region from nearby South Waziristan were the targets.

The army deployed 30,000 troops against the Pakistani Taleban in South Waziristan in mid-October and has retaken many towns in the region. But most of the some 10,000 militants along with their leaders are believed to have fled to Kurram and Orakzai to the north rather than fight.

The United States has welcomed the effort, but wants the Pakistanis to do more against the insurgents in the border area blamed for violence across the border in Afghanistan.

— With input from agencies