Pakistan in victory over Taliban

Pakistan said yesterday it had forced Taliban militants out of a key battleground in the global fight against extremism and boasted of major gains in another region bordering Afghanistan.

The six-month battle with Islamist insurgents in the remote Bajaur district is seen as pivotal to the country's fight against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, after bombings have killed more than 1,600 people in less than two years.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan's government launched the Bajaur offensive in August amid heavy criticism from US and Afghan officials who say it is not doing enough to stop militants crossing into Afghanistan to attack foreign troops.

Heavy artillery and helicopter gunships have pounded Bajaur, one of Pakistan's seven federally-administered tribal areas (FATA) along the Afghan border, in a bid to flush out militant bases, killing hundreds.

"We think that we have secured this agency (district)," said Major General Tariq Khan, the commander of forces fighting in Bajaur.

"They have lost. They have lost their cohesion out here," Khan told reporters flown by helicopters from the capital, Islamabad.

A Pakistani army colonel named Saifullah, who gave only one name, said the military had also beaten back militants in the neighbouring tribal area of Mohmand, also on the Afghan border, where security forces have been waging lower-level offensives.

"Now the people's minds are clear. They now believe in the strength of the force and the resolve of the government that this militancy is being pursued and is being finished," he told reporters in Ghallanai.

"The influence of militants has reduced over a major proportion of the population and area," the colonel added.

Pakistan is facing increased US pressure to clampdown on militant hideouts with President Barack Obama deploying an extra 17,000 troops to Afghanistan as part of a major shift in its action against global terrorist networks from Iraq to south Asia.