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Al-Qaeda-Pak troops clash leaves 13 dead

AFP, Angoor Adda
Pakistani troops killed 12 al-Qaeda suspects and captured 12 militants in a dramatic siege Thursday involving helicopter gunships and ground forces in this remote northwestern area on the Afghan border.
One Pakistani soldier was killed and two injured in the day-long gun battle, military spokesman Shaukat Sultan said.
The captured included four suspected al-Qaeda fighters, six suspected Taliban supporters and two others, army officers said.
The operation, launched after attacks on troops in Afghanistan's adjacent Paktika province, began with a dawn siege of an al-Qaeda hideout five km from the border at Angoor Adad in South Waziristan.
Journalists taken by the Pakistani army to the scene as fighting raged were shown four dead bodies covered in shrouds, 10 prisoners and a massive cache of anti-tank mines, grenades, rockets and machine guns seized from the hideout.
Another eight bodies were lying in the field and had yet to be recovered, said special forces Major General Faizal Alavi, the commander of the operation.
Four of the prisoners -- blindfolded, stripped to the waist and sporting long, dark beards -- were foreign al-Qaeda suspects with Central Asian features, Alavi said.
The other six, dressed in traditional local outfits and caps, were suspected Taliban, he said. Some had long, white beards.
Two more militants were captured later, officials said, without identifying them.
As Alavi spoke at the edge of the operation, Cobra gunships fired missiles at al-Qaeda suspects hiding in gullies and trees, grenades exploded and gunfire crackled.
An unknown number of al-Qaeda suspects had been hiding out in five mud-walled compounds, each made up of several houses.
Pakistani forces, having confirmed Wednesday the compounds were an al-Qaeda hideout, surrounded the buildings Thursday and
ordered the militants to surrender.
Women and children ran out of one house, but Alavi said they had nothing to do with the al-Qaeda group and their home was separate from the others.
The besieged al-Qaeda suspects refused to surrender and instead fought back with grenades and gunfire, Alavi said.
Pakistan launched the operation after a series of attacks on US and Afghan troops in Paktika blamed on resurgent members of Afghanistan's hardline Islamic Taliban regime, ousted in late 2001, and its al-Qaeda allies.
South Waziristan is facing the Afghan region of Shkin, home of the most attacked US base in Afghanistan, and dubbed last week by the US military spokesman Rodney Davis as "the most evil place in Afghanistan."
Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP the operation was "against foreign elements who were most likely involved in attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan."
There was "a great possibility" that the al-Qaeda suspects were the people involved in attacks that killed a US soldier in Shkin on Monday, Sultan told reporters in Angoor Adda.
"There are all possibilities some of these people might have been involved in these actions. I would say there is a great possibility."
He said the suspects had crossed from Shkin area.
"When these people escaped (Shkin area) they came and took refuge in this area. They were trapped by our people."
Hundreds of al-Qaeda fugitives have taken refuge in South Waziristan district since late 2001, according to local human rights activists.
Afghan officials have repeatedly pointed to South Waziristan as the source of attacks by resurgent Taliban fighters.
The army would not give details of how many troops were deployed or how many al-Qaeda suspects they were mobilising against.
Some 25,000 troops are deployed to hunt al-Qaeda fugitives in the seven tribal districts hugging the 1,250 km northwest border with Afghanistan.
The Taliban regime was toppled in a US-led campaign launched after the September 11 attacks blamed on al-Qaeda.