PESHAWAR: Seven people including a policeman and paramilitary soldier were killed in two separate incidents when Pakistani security forces hit militant hide-outs in the restive northwest Saturday morning, officials said.

In the first incident, police and paramilitary soldiers raided suspected hide-outs in Shabqadar, a town around 30 kilometers north of Peshawar.

“A soldier of the Frontier Corps and a policeman embraced martyrdom in an exchange of fire with militants in Mechani neighborhood of Shabqadar Saturday morning,” local police official Wilayat Khan told AFP.

He said two militants belonging to Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP), the militant organization that carried out Tuesday’s massacre at a military-run school in Peshawar — the deadliest ever attack in Pakistan — were also killed.

Rasheed Khan, another senior official confirmed the incident. He said the militants opened fire when the police and paramilitary troops raided their hide-outs.

Spokesman of the Jamatul Ahrar faction of the Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan, Ehsanullah Ehsan, claimed responsibility for the attack.

“We will continue to target security forces and the police in the future too,” he told AFP in a telephone call from an undisclosed location.

In another incident, five members of the TTP including a local commander were killed.

“Five members of the Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP) were killed in a raid on their hideout in Gujjar Gadi neighborhood of Matni, around 16 miles south of Peshawar,” a senior security official told AFP.

As the Peshawar tragedy unfolded, army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif said the attack had renewed the forces’ determination to push for the militants’ “final elimination.”

Meanwhile, a US drone fired two missiles at militant hide-out in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing at least five Taleban fighters, two security officials said.

The drone strike took place in the town of Datta Khel in North Waziristan, where Pakistani troops have been carrying out a major operation against local and foreign militants since June, the officials said.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said the men killed in the drone strike fought under local Pakistani Taleban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur. It was not immediately clear if the drone strike was connected to the school massacre.