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Friday 24 December 2010

Taliban launch attacks along north Pakistan border


At least 11 soldiers and 24 militants have been killed in clashes near the Afghan border in north-west Pakistan, officials have said.
About 150 Taliban launched co-ordinated attacks against five Frontier Corps checkpoints in Mohmand tribal region on Thursday evening, they said.
The Taliban said only two of their fighters had died.
The military have launched offensives in the region in recent months, but insurgent attacks have continued.
Amjad Ali Khan, administrator of Mohmand, confirmed that 11 soldiers had been killed, following initial reports that three had died. He said 12 other soldiers had been injured.
Mr Khan said the Frontier Corps paramilitary troops had "repulsed" the militant attacks.
"The troops responded with artillery fire and raids by helicopter gunships, killing 24 militants," he said.
"Seven of their bodies are in our possession."
However, Sajjad Mohmand, spokesman for the Taliban in Mohmand, told the BBC that only two insurgents had been killed in the clashes.
He said they held six bodies of soldiers killed in the attacks.
Mohmand is a transit point for insurgents crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan and a stronghold of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad says militants are proving that they can carry out attacks, despite the military campaign against them.
Earlier this month, a twin suicide bomb attack at a government compound in Ghalanai left 43 people dead. Local officials had been meeting tribal elders to discuss forming an anti-Taliban militia at the time of the blasts.
In July, another twin suicide bombing attack, also targeting tribal elders, killed more than 100 people in the village of Yakaghund in Mohmand.

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