by Muhammad Tahir
ISLAMABAD, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani troops are battling militants in a rugged mountainous region to deprive them of one of their remaining few bases and to block a key route they use for cross-border movement, recent army accounts have confirmed.
Hundreds of soldiers, backed by air power, launched the fresh major offensive in the Khyber tribal agency near the Afghan border on Aug. 16, as part of a broader strategy to secure all border regions and dozens of militants have been killed as a result and their hideouts destroyed in the Rajgal Valley since the launch of the operation, army officials said.
Officials believe that militants had been exploiting the difficult terrain to enter Pakistan and Afghanistan to carry out terrorist attacks, after the Pakistani authorities introduced new monitoring systems at official crossing points.
The army said the operation, codenamed "Khyber-3", was necessary to shut down movement through the Rajgal Valley along the Pak-Afghan border and to "reinforce troops' deployment and to effectively check and guard against terrorists' movement along high mountains and all-weather passes in the Khyber Agency."
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