Pakistani secure militant area in Khyber region

Pakistani security forces have secured an area in the Khyber region, where a key supply route passes into Afghanistan, a day after launching an offensive to push back militants threatening Peshawar.

The offensive is the first major military action the new government has launched against militants since it took power after February elections, and comes after growing alarm about the consolidation and spread of militant influence in the northwest.

A senior government official in the region told Reuters there had been no violence since Saturday night.

"The situation is under control. We have destroyed at least three militant hideouts and Frontier Corps soldiers are patrolling and controlling the area," said the official, who declined to be identified.

The Khyber region is home to the Khyber Pass through which vital supplies for Western forces in Afghanistan pass. It had been virtually free of militant violence until this year but security has deteriorated in recent months as Islamist militants ganged up with the criminals.

Major-General Alam Khattack said on Saturday his forces were focused on Bara town, about 15 km (10 miles) southwest of Peshawar. He said the offensive was expected to last four or five days but could be extended.

A security official said one militant was killed on Saturday.

Paramilitary troops fired mortar bombs at militants and later blew up several of their positions, including the house of militant commander, Mangal Bagh. Roads in and out of Bara have been closed and a curfew imposed.

In recent weeks, Islamist vigilantes loyal to Bagh began roaming into some Peshawar neighbourhoods. Riding on the back of pick-up trucks, fighters wielding Kalashnikovs threatened music and video shop owners, and ordered barbers to stop shaving men's beards.

"GO HOME"

But Bagh is not allied with the main Pakistani Taliban group led by Baitullah Mehsud, and his men do not have a reputation for crossing into Afghanistan to attack Western troops.

Bagh told the News newspaper by telephone he had ordered members of his Lashkar-i-Islami (LI), or Army of Islam, group not to oppose the offensive.

"I have told LI volunteers to go home and not resist," Bagh told the newspaper, which said he was speaking by telephone from the remote Tirah valley.

Bagh said he did not know why security forces were attacking his group, which did not harbour foreign militants or have links with the Taliban or al Qaeda.

Security experts said the appearance of the Taliban in Peshawar reflected a failure to halt an Islamist tide rolling in from tribal areas on the Afghan border that have become Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds.

Residents of Peshawar had begun to fear that the city could fall into the clutches of the Taliban, even though the main army garrison for the northwest is in the city of three million.

Apparently in response to the offensive in Khyber, Pakistani Taliban leader Mehsud, based in remote South Waziristan on the Afghan border, said he was suspending talks the new government hoped could end violence.

Speaking by satellite phone from an undisclosed location, Mehsud voiced apprehension the offensive in Khyber was just the first of several and he threatened retaliation.

"The fire will not only burn in tribal areas and Frontier Province, it will engulf Punjab and Sindh also," Mehsud said.