Pakistan troops attack suspected hideout

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday that talk of U.S. military strikes against al-Qaida in Pakistan only hurts the fight against terrorism, and his troops bombarded militant hideouts in their strongest response yet to a month of anti-government attacks. Ten suspected militants were killed.

The assault by artillery and helicopter gunships "knocked out" two compounds in Daygan village in the tribal belt near the border with Afghanistan that were being used as staging posts for attacks on security forces, said Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the army's top spokesman.

Ten militants were killed and at least seven were wounded in the operation, about 10 miles west of Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan region, he said.

No ground troops were used in the operation, and the report on militant casualties was based on information from "local sources," he said without elaborating.

There were at least four smaller-scale bombings and shootings in the border region Tuesday, the latest in almost daily violence that has intensified pressure on Musharraf to crack down on militants in the area.

Musharraf, a key ally in Washington's war against terrorism, told visiting Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., that comments by senior U.S. officials and presidential hopefuls about the possibility of unilateral U.S. strikes within the country were not helpful. Musharraf met Durbin in the southern city of Karachi.

"He emphasized that only Pakistan's security forces, which were fully capable of dealing with any situation, would take counterterrorism action inside Pakistani territory," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"The president pointed out that certain recent U.S. statements were counterproductive to the close cooperation and coordination between the two countries in combating the threat of terrorism," the ministry said.

President Bush said Monday that America and Pakistan, if armed with good intelligence, could track and kill al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan. He stopped short of saying whether he would ask Musharraf before dispatching U.S. troops to the country.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a presidential candidate, has said that he would use military force in Pakistan if necessary to root out terrorists, prompting angry responses from Pakistani officials.

Musharraf also described a new law tying U.S. aid to Pakistan to progress in combatting militants as an "irritant in the bilateral relationship," the statement said.

His comments came two days before he is due to hold talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai about border security at a tribal council, or jirga, in Afghanistan.

Arshad said U.S.-made Cobra helicopter gunships and artillery attacked the compounds in North Waziristan about 5 a.m. after receiving intelligence that militants were there. Militants fired back with light and heavy weapons. The clash lasted about four hours, he said.

"The militants used to regroup and prepare attacks on security forces and take refuge at these compounds, so security forces targeted them," Arshad told Dawn television.

A local security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his job, said a stray mortar round had hit a home in Miran Shah, injuring three or four people.

The Daygan assault appeared to be the toughest military action since troops withdrawn from the tribal zone in September 2006 began to redeploy there in July, following the collapse of a controversial peace deal with pro-Taliban militants.

Since then, attacks on government forces have risen, and more than 360 people have been killed, including at least 102 in the army's raid last month of the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad. Militants have vowed to avenge those deaths.

Elsewhere along the border Tuesday, a soldier was killed in a drive-by attack on security forces by two men on a motorcycle in North West Frontier Province, according to police official Israr Khan. Another soldier was killed in North Waziristan by a bomb that exploded near him as he fetched water from a stream, a security official said.

In Bannu, a city near North Waziristan, a bomb exploded Tuesday evening close to a police station, injuring five civilians but no police, said Amir Maqbool Shah, a Bannu police officer.

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Associated Press Writers Bashirullah Khan in Miran Shah and Riaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.