The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Islamabad

Up to 30 more militants loyal to a pro-Taliban cleric were killed in clashes with Pakistani security forces in a remote northwest tourist valley, the army said Tuesday.

The latest deaths take the toll reported by the army from a week of fighting in the scenic Swat Valley to around 150.

"Our offensive against militants has been continuing since last night and there are reports that 20 to 30 more militants have been killed," chief military spokesman major general Waheed Arshad told AFP.

The army said at the weekend that it would imminently launch a major offensive to retake Swat from followers of radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah, who runs his own jihadi radio station.

Arshad said that troops were now controlling a key road in Swat's Shangla district, which leads to the militant-held main town of Alpuri.

Residents in different areas of Swat valley said that gunfire continued and helicopters hovered in the sky as scores of people abandoned their homes in Dagai and Akhund Kalai areas.

The military had asked the residents to vacate the area on Monday so that during operations against militants there would be no civilian casualties.

Witnesses said that people were moving towards safer areas with their belongings packed in cars, pick-up vans and even in rickshaws.

Meanwhile, tribal elders launched efforts on Tuesday to end bloody sectarian clashes in a Pakistani tribal area which have claimed at least 112 lives, officials and residents said.

A 16-member tribal peace delegation arrived Monday in Parachinar, the town at the centre of the violence, to mediate between rival Sunni and Shiite tribes, a tribal administration official said.

Chief military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said the situation was "stable" in Parachinar, the main town in the troubled Kurram tribal agency bordering Afghanistan.

"Parachinar is calm. Troops are patrolling the streets and have set up pickets in several parts of the town, while armed groups have left their positions," a local shopkeeper told AFP.

"There is still a curfew in place while there is no electricity and also a water shortage. We are helping each other and neighbours are sharing whatever food stocks they have left," he said.

But three more people died in clashes that continued Tuesday in villages around Parachinar, residents and local officials said.

Rival Sunni and Shiite groups were firing at each other with light cannons and mortars in Upper Kurram, Sadda, Tehwar and Trimanga villages.

Officials have put the latest death toll at 112 with 300 injured. Health officials said they faced a shortage of medicines.

The Pentagon plans to train and equip an expanded paramilitary force in Pakistan's tribal areas in a major effort to counter the growing strength of Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces, officials said Monday.

US Army troops will be used to train the Pakistani Frontier Corps at a new center in the tribal areas that border Afghanistan, said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

The efforts come amid political instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan under President Pervez Musharraf and mounting US concerns over the spread of Islamic militancy.

It was unclear how many military trainers will be required, but any increase would significantly boost the US military presence in Pakistan, which currently numbers only about 50 military personnel, including embassy guards.

It also marks a shift in favor of a locally recruited paramilitary force that many have considered unreliable because it is drawn from Pashtun tribes sympathetic to the Taliban.

"We believe that, particularly in this part of Pakistan, it is more effective to work with a force raised from locals than it is to work with the Pak army," Morrell said.

The Pakistani army, he said, "is not viewed with the same kind of respect in that part of the country as is the Frontier Corps, which is comprised of people who know the language and who have grown up in the area, and have relations with tribal leaders there."

The scale of the unrest has exposed the deep tribal and religious tensions in this mountainous region where guns and weaponry -- including rocket-launchers and mortars -- are in plentiful supply.

Shiites account for 20 percent of Pakistan's 160 million, Sunni-dominated population but are the majority in Parachinar.

The two sides usually co-exist peacefully, but outbreaks of sectarian violence have claimed more than 4,000 lives across Pakistan since the late 1980s.