Pakistani troops killed over 43 alleged militants in an operation in the Khyber tribal region while airstrikes left several more dead on Saturday in the stronghold of the new Taliban chief elsewhere in the northwest, officials said.
Militants frequently attack trucks along the famed Khyber Pass, a main route for supplies destined for US troops in Afghanistan.
That's one reason Pakistan is under intense US pressure to crack down on insurgents along the Afghan border, especially the lawless tribal belt where al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is suspected to be hiding.
The US believes militants use Pakistan's tribal areas and other troubled parts of the northwest as safe havens from which to plan attacks on Western troops across the frontier.
The Taliban-affiliated group Lashkar-e-Islam has been a main target of the latest government offensive in Khyber, which authorities say has killed scores of alleged militants.
The paramilitary Frontier Corps announced the latest deaths in a written statement, adding an important headquarters of Lashkar-e-Islam was also destroyed.
The Khyber operation was launched about a week ago after a suicide bombing at a border checkpoint killed 19 police. The top government official in Khyber, Tariq Hayat, said it would continue until all the militants were flushed out of the region.
Elsewhere in the northwest Saturday, Pakistani fighter jets and helicopter gunships pounded militant hide-outs in three villages of the Orakzai tribal region -- the stronghold of new Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud.
The death toll could not immediately be ascertained, but it could be 20 or more, said one of two intelligence officials who confirmed the attacks. The officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information to media.
Khyber and Orakzai are remote regions largely off-limits to journalists, making it difficult to verify the information independently.
