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Military claims victory in militant stronghold

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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Army claimed Monday to have routed Taliban militants in a stronghold near the Afghan border but turned up no sign of Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida no 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.

Pakistani officials said Monday that their forces had killed some 560 Pakistani and foreign fighters and thwarted a push to make Bajaur into a militant fortress.

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said about 20 members of the security forces died and 30 others were missing.

"In our view, the back has been broken," chief army spokesman told a foreign news agency. "Main leaders are on the run and the people of the area are now openly defying whatever the militants had achieved there."

Officials including former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf have mentioned Bajaur as a possible hiding place for bin Laden or al-Zawahri.

Abbas said many foreigners were reportedly in Bajaur before the operation, but that many had probably fled to Afghanistan or other parts of Pakistan's northwest and that the operation had turned up no trace of the al-Qaida chiefs.

Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said Monday that authorities also received a report that al-Zawahri's wife had been in the neighboring tribal region of Mohmand.

Pakistani forces stormed the location but didn't find the couple, he said, without indicating when the raid took place. He said al-Zawahri moved between Mohmand and the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Paktika.

Malik accused the Afghan government of "inefficiency" for letting many of the estimated 3,000 militants who had gathered in Bajaur flee over the frontier.

According to Malik, the three weeks of fighting in Bajur had killed an uncertain number of civilians and badly damaged several villages. Of about 500,000 people who fled, many of them to government relief camps, about 30,000 had returned by Monday. :yahoo::yahoo::sniper::tup: kikk them out of pakistan
 
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