By DPA
Islamabad : Pakistan’s military said Tuesday it had killed five Islamist militants and arrested 20 following the abduction of four security personnel by gunmen in the country’s restive tribal area.
“(An) unknown number of masked miscreants abducted four security personnel from paramilitary Dir Scouts when they were on their way to the base in the tribal district of Ladha in South Waziristan,” the army’s chief spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said.
The government forces retaliated and launched an operation supported by artillery fire on suspected militant locations, he added.
Twenty fighters were apprehended and five killed in the action, the latest in a region where thousands of Al Qaeda and Taliban militants took refuge after US-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
The Pakistani government has deployed tens of thousands of troops in the area to prevent militants from launching cross border attacks on NATO-led international forces in Afghanistan.
Islamabad has also accused local militant commander Baitullah Mehsud of being behind the assassination last week of Pakistan’s popular opposition leader Benazir Bhutto at a public rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
However, his spokesman Maulvi Omar has denied the allegation and demanded an independent inquiry into the murder.