Pakistani air strikes killed 19 suspected militants on Sunday, police and security officials said, in an ongoing bombardment aimed at shattering Taliban strongholds across the northwest.
Army officials, meanwhile, said a close aide of Maulana Fazlullah - the Taliban commander in northwest Swat valley - was killed as a 10-week-long operation against militants in the scenic region rumbled on.
Military and government officials claim to have almost cleared Swat valley of insurgents and are now targeting the tribal region bordering Afghanistan, but fresh shelling erupted on Sunday just north of Swat's main town Mingora.
"Gunship helicopters shelled militant hideouts at Mangaltan area of Charbagh town. At least ten militants were killed in the shelling," Major Nasir Khan, a military spokesman in Mingora, told the news agency AFP by telephone.
Khan said the air attacks were called in after fresh reports of militant movement in the area. An intelligence official in Mingora confirmed the strikes and the death toll.
Security forces have vowed to follow up the Swat campaign with an offensive against Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud and his network in the lawless tribal belt, where Washington alleges Al Qaeda fighters are also hiding out.
At least six alleged rebels linked to the hardline Taliban were killed Sunday in the tribal North Waziristan region near the Afghan border.
"Six or seven militants were killed and four were injured when jet fighters bombed Taliban hideouts in different parts of Datta Khel," Aziz Khan, a tribal police official, said by telephone.
The air strikes hit about 20 km west of Miranshah, the main district town in the semi-autonomous mountain region.
Residents said they saw six dead bodies, but added that civilians were also hurt.
"We were in our houses when war planes bombed the area," local resident Mahmood Gul said from Miranshah's main hospital, where he had taken his young son for treatment for shrapnel wounds.
In the Orakzai region on Sunday, gunship helicopters shelled militant positions in two areas.
"At least three militants were killed and many injured in the shelling," a military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The bombardment hit close to the site of a military helicopter crash on Friday which killed 26 security personnel.
The military have blamed a technical fault for the crash, but the Taliban claim to have shot down the MI-17 in retaliation for the start of military operations in Waziristan.
Also on Sunday, army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said that the military had killed a commander loyal to Fazlullah on the outskirts of Mingora.
"Ehsan, alias Abu Jandal, was killed two days earlier in Qambar area. He was a mid-level commander," said Abbas. Security sources in the area confirmed the death and said Jandal was a close aide of the firebrand cleric.
Fazlullah has a $600,000 government bounty on his head, and although the interior minister has said he is injured and surrounded, the military have refused to confirm reports of his imminent death or capture.
In other unrest, a nine-year-old girl was killed and ten other people wounded when a roadside bomb was remotely detonated in Upper Dir district, which neighbours Swat, said local police chief Mohammad Ijaz Khan.
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