The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Tang Khata

Pakistan said Friday that troops have killed 1,000 Islamist militants in a huge offensive, a day after President Asif Ali Zardari lashed out at the US over a clash on the Afghan border.

Five top Al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders were among the dead in a month-long operation in Bajaur district, currently the most troubled of Pakistan's unstable tribal areas close to the porous frontier, a top official said.

In a further sign of the instability gripping Pakistan since the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad at the weekend, three suicide bombers blew themselves up in a shootout with police in Karachi.

Reporters were flown by helicopter to Khar, the main town in restive Bajaur, for a briefing on the military operation launched in August against Islamist militants who had taken control of most of the region. "The overall toll is over 1,000 militants," said Tariq Khan, inspector general of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, adding that 27 soldiers had also been killed in the fighting. "This is a center of gravity for the militants," Khan told journalists. "If they lose here they lose everything." Five top militant commanders were among the dead, he said. He said four of the commanders appeared to be foreigners: Egyptian Abu Saeed Al-Masri; Abu Suleiman, an Arab; an Uzbek commander named Mullah Mansoor; and an Afghan commander called Manaras. The fifth was a Pakistani commander named only Abdullah, a son of ageing hardline leader Maulvi Faqir Mohammad who is based in Bajaur and has close ties to Al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri. Bajaur, which borders the Afghan province of Kunar, has seen some of the fiercest fighting between Pakistani forces and Islamist militants since former military ruler Pervez Musharraf joined the US-led "war on terror" in 2001.

The operation came in response to international pressure on Pakistan's new civilian government, which ousted Musharraf last month, to prevent Pakistan-based militants from launching attacks in Afghanistan.

But tensions have escalated with Washington since a September 3 ground attack by US forces inside Pakistan, the first of its kind since 2001, left about 15 people dead.

Following an exchange of gunfire between US and Pakistani forces on the frontier on Thursday, new President Zardari told the United Nations that Pakistan would not tolerate violations of its sovereignty, even by its allies.

The incident happened after two US military helicopters came under fire from the Pakistani side, a US military spokesman said, insisting that they had been about a mile and a half inside Afghanistan. The Pakistani military said its troops had fired warning shots at two helicopters which were "well within Pakistani territory." "Just as we will not let Pakistani's territory to be used by terrorists for attacks against our people and our neighbours, we cannot allow our territory and our sovereignty to be violated by our friends," he said, without citing the United States or the border flareup.

In Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, three militants detonated suicide vests when police raided their hideout on a tip-off from a captured rebel, police said.

"We have saved Karachi from death and destruction. We know who they were and what was their target in Karachi, but we cannot disclose it immediately," provincial police chief Babar Khattak told AFP. The incident came less than a week after the suicide truck bomb attack on the Islamabad Marriott, one of the worst attacks in Pakistan's history, which left 53 dead and more than 260 wounded.

Reuters reports adds: U.S. and Pakistani ground forces exchanged fire across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border on Thursday, the latest in a string of incidents that has ratcheted up diplomatic tension between the two allies.

No casualties or injuries were reported after Pakistani forces shot at two U.S. helicopters from a Pakistani border post. U.S. and Pakistani officials clashed over whether the American helicopters had entered Pakistan.

The incident follows a U.S. campaign of attacks on militant targets inside Pakistan, including a September 3 U.S. commando raid on a village compound in South Waziristan. Islamabad has protested those strikes and warned it would defend itself.

"Just as we will not let Pakistan's territory be used by terrorists for attacks against our people and our neighbors, we cannot allow our territory and our sovereignty to be violated by our friends," Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in New York on Thursday.

But in Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman insisted the helicopters had not entered Pakistan. He described the incident as "troubling" and called on Islamabad for an explanation.

"The flight path of the helicopters at no point took them over Pakistan," he said. "The Pakistanis have to provide us with a better understanding of why this took place."

According to Pakistan's military, its soldiers fired warning shots at two U.S. helicopters after they intruded into Pakistani airspace. The U.S. military said the helicopters were protecting a patrol about one mile inside Afghanistan when Pakistani forces opened fire.

"The (helicopters) did not return fire but the ground forces fired suppressive fire at that outpost. The Pakistani forces then returned that fire. The whole exchange lasted about five minutes," said an official with U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in Afghanistan.