PESHAWAR: A militant ambush on a convoy of security forces in a restive Pakistani tribal region on Monday left 14 personnel dead, officials said.
The incident took place in the Shindhand area in the restive Khyber tribal region on the Afghan border.
"The personnel were returning to their base after carrying out a search operation in the nearby Sipah area when ambushed by militants," a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He said most of the casualties were caused when one of the mortars targeting the militants exploded in the barrel of the gun.
"Those martyred in the attack included a colonel and a captain," he said.
Another security official confirmed the attack and casualties, saying that personnel of the paramilitary Frontier Corps were traveling in a convoy of up to four vehicles at the time of attack.
Khyber, a home to Taliban insurgents and militants from the extremist group Lashkar-e-Islam, led by local warlord Mangal Bagh, lies on the main NATO land supply route through Pakistan into Afghanistan, where foreign forces are battling to reverse an escalating Taliban insurgency, now in its ninth year.
The district neighbours the northwestern city of Peshawar, a gateway to the lawless tribal regions.
Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants frequently launch attacks across northwestern Pakistan and the tribal badlands on the Afghan border, which Washington has branded the most dangerous place in the world.
US officials consider northwest Pakistan a haven for Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan to regroup and launch attacks on foreign troops across the border.
Under US pressure to crack down on Islamist havens along the Afghan border, Pakistan has in the past two years stepped up military operations against largely homegrown militants in the tribal regions, including Khyber.
Pakistan launched its most ambitious military offensive yet against Taliban militants in South Waziristan in 2009, expanding the campaign to many of the other seven semi-autonomous tribal districts along the border.
US officials are putting pressure on Pakistan to launch a major ground offensive in the tribal region of North Waziristan, considered a fortress for Taliban groups fighting US-led troops in Afghanistan.
However, Pakistan says its troops are too overstretched to launch such an assault.
Washington says eliminating the militant threat is vital to winning the nine-year war against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.
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