ISLAMABAD, 3 October 2005 — Suspected militants attacked an army camp in a remote area with rockets which killed three soldiers and injured eight others, sources said. The Al-Qaeda-linked rebels fired 20 rockets.
“Three soldiers were killed and eight others were injured when miscreants fired 20 rockets on an army camp late Saturday,” a security official said.
“The rockets were fired from a nearby mountain.”
Soldiers returned fire and damaged two houses in the North Waziristan tribal area but there were no reports of casualties among the militants, he said.
Meanwhile, troops supported by helicopter gunships continued their search for militants in North Waziristan’s Khatey Killay village near the border, residents said.
Officials have said as many as 30 suspected militants have been killed since the operation started on Thursday. They said troops have retrieved five bodies.
Separately, two armed tribesmen were killed early yesterday in a shootout with paramilitary troops at a checkpoint in Eisha village, 12 km east of Miranshah, an official said.
“The tribesmen refused to surrender their Kalashnikov rifles at the checkpoint, after which a scuffle started between them and the soldiers at the checkpoint and in the shooting both civilians died,” he said.
“We have arrested two others traveling with them, one got injured in the firing, and they are suspected of links with Afghanistan’s Taleban,” the official said.
In neighboring South Waziristan unknown attackers shot dead a son of a pro-government tribal elder and injured one of his brothers near the region’s main town of Wana, a local official said.
The military has launched offensives in the tribal regions since 2003 to flush out Al-Qaeda-linked militants who sneaked into the rugged region after the fall of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan in late 2001.
Hundreds of militants were killed last year in South Waziristan, where the army also lost some 250 men.
