Pakistan army ‘kills 40 militants’

Earlier in the day, two intelligence officials, who declined to be identified as they were not authorised to speak on the record, told Reuters that air strikes on Monday morning killed militants in the Zoi Nari, Lataka, Mizer Madakhel and Shawal areas of North Waziristan.

At least 65 militants have been killed and an ammunition dump destroyed in airstrikes in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan, PressTV reported.

According to a statement released by the Pakistani Army, airstrikes were carried out on Sunday in the militant-infested Shawal area of the North Waziristan.

“Reportedly terrorist’s infrastructures in area which include ammunition dump are badly damaged”, the statement from the Inter- Services Public Relations said.

Death toll of the militants killed reached 105 in two days.

Military authorities are said to have killed 40 militants in the Shawal Valley of the volatile North Waziristan tribal region on Sunday.

In separate incident 15 terrorists were killed in air strikes in mountainous Khyber Agency on Monday. Hundreds of thousands of tribesmen displaced by fighting have started returning to their homes in North Waziristan under the government supervision.

Ghani banked almost all his political capital on Pakistan in a bid to bring peace to this region and asked Islamabad to compel the Taliban toward peace talks with the Afghan government.

Following Operation Zarb-e-Azb, the military had launched another operation in the strategic Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency in mid-October, last year against the Mangal Bagh-led Lashkar-e-Islam extremist group and its Taliban supporters.