Rocket attack kills Pakistani soldier
Pro-Taliban tribal militants have fired a rocket at a fort near the Afghan border, killing a Pakistani soldier and wounding four others.
Security officials said on Sunday that the attack took place on Saturday night in the Dattakhel area, about 30km west of Miranshah.
An official, who requested anonymity, said: “The dead man is a soldier of the Pakistan army, and among the wounded one are an army captain and three militiamen.”
Security forces returned fire but the attackers escaped in the darkness and it was unknown if they suffered any casualties.
Miranshah is the main town in North Waziristan, a semi-autonomous Pashtun tribal region at the centre of the Pakistan army’s campaign to drive out al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Last month, Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president and a key ally in the US-led war on terrorism, warned foreign militants hiding in the tribal region to leave Pakistan or face annihilation.
About 200 tribesmen were killed in clashes with security forces early last month when they answered a call to arms by militant Muslim clerics after a special forces assault on an al-Qaeda camp in the area.
Many al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters fled to Pakistan’s tribal regions whenUS-led forces toppled the radical Taliban regime in Afghanistan after the 11 September 2001 attacks on Washington and New York.