Pak troops kill 30 militants

Pakistani troops battled Islamic militants during a search for several hijacked trucks full of ammunition yesterday, with up to 30 rebels and two soldiers killed, the army said.
Helicopter gunships were also involved in the clashes in Dara Adam Khel, a lawless area of North West Frontier Province near the city of Peshawar where the lorries were seized by rebels a day earlier, officials and residents said.
Unrest is spreading along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, with troops separately engaged in a major operation in the tribal stronghold of an al-Qaeda-linked militant blamed for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
The instability prompted US Defence Secretary Robert Gates to offer on Thursday that the United States is "ready, willing and able" to conduct joint combat operations in the troubled region if Islamabad agrees.
Pakistan's Western allies are increasingly concerned about the situation in the nuclear-armed Islamic republic since Benazir's killing last month, with President Pervez Musharraf under pressure to keep a lid on the violence.
In the latest flare-up, Pakistani troops launched a "search and cordon" operation in Dara Adam Khel -- the site of a major tribal weapons bazaar -- to find four trucks containing munitions and supplies, the army said.
"Reportedly, 25-30 miscreants have been killed... Two Frontier Corps personnel embraced shahadat (martyrdom) and 10 others were injured," an army statement added.
Chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said skirmishes were continuing in the region including near a landmark Japanese-built tunnel leading from Peshawar to the northwestern city of Kohat.
Residents said all markets were closed and gunship helicopters were pounding militant bunkers in the hills around the arms bazaar and the tunnel. The main road was also closed, they said.
Security officials said Dara Adam Khel had recently become a stronghold of the banned Sunni Muslim extremist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has links to al-Qaeda.
Separately, troops yesterday continued to comb mountains in the tribal region of South Waziristan around the hideout of Islamist warlord Baitullah Mehsud, officials said.
Mehsud is accused by Pakistani officials and the US Central Intelligence Agency of orchestrating Bhutto's killing in a gun and suicide bomb attack at a political rally on December 27.