Militant attack on Pakistan security checkpoint kills 20
More than 100 militants have stormed a security checkpoint in north-western Pakistan yesterday, killing at least eight soldiers, officials say.
At least 12 insurgents were also reported killed in the overnight gun battle that lasted some hours.
The attack happened near the town of Makeen in the tribal district of South Waziristan, near the Afghan border.
The area has seen a surge in missile strikes by US drone planes in recent days.
Only a few days ago, locals and officials said a US drone attack in South Waziristan had killed a top al-Qaeda militant, Ilyas Kashmiri.
Tension has been increasing across the whole border region because of a growing sense that Pakistan is preparing to carry out at least a limited offensive in North Waziristan, the BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad reports.
Local officials said the militants - armed with rockets and heavy weapons - stormed the checkpoint shortly after midnight, killing eight soldiers and injuring around a dozen more.
Security forces responded and the firefight continued for at least three hours, reportedly killing around 12 insurgents.
Some reports say the militants were from the Taliban.
The attack happened in the Marobi village area, some 12km (7 miles) east of Makeen town, once a stronghold of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leadership, close to the border with North Waziristan.
This is the first large-scale attack by militants on a Pakistani target in several months, although smaller attacks on the military have been reported from the area on a regular basis.
In signs of mounting violence elsewhere across the region four people died in a roadside blast in the Peshawar suburb of Mattni
A Nato oil tanker was also destroyed following an explosion in the Khyber trial region
And in South Waziristan at least one soldier was killed by a remotely-triggered improvised explosive device (IED) .
Militants in Pakistan have vowed to avenge the reported killing of Ilyas Kashmiri, as well as the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who was killed by US forces on May 2.
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