WANA, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistani troops have hemmed in Al-Qaeda-linked foreign fighters and their local allies hiding in the country's tribal regions with a series of military assaults, a top Pakistani general revealed.
"We have eliminated a number of terrorists' hideouts in the region and ... their operational space have been reduced to a considerable degree," Major General Niaz Khatak told reporters Saturday in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border.
A team of foreign and local journalists were taken to nearby Shakai valley where the army carried out a major air and ground offensive in June, destroying a suspected Al-Qaeda military training camp and several hideouts.
The operation in Shakai, 25 kilometers (15 miles) north of Wana, left around 65 militants dead at the cost of 18 troops.
Since then operations have expanded to other areas, with Pakistani jets destroying a militant training camp at Khanigurram, 25 kilometers northeast of Wana, killing some 50 mainly Uzbek and Chechen fighters.
The operations have triggered strong protests from radical Islamic parties as well the secular opposition, who demand that a political solution be found to the problem of hundreds of foreigners in the tribal belt.
"The military has never fired the first shot," Khatak said, insisting that most of the targetted areas in South Waziristan had been cleared of foreign fighters and their local allies.
The general dismissed speculation over the presence of high value Al-Qaeda targets in the mountainous region.
Military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan, who accompanied the media team, also said Pakistani security agencies had no information about the whereabouts of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden or his deputy Ayman Al Zawahiri.
"We don't have any intelligence on high value targets, and I mean Osama and Zawahiri," Sultan told reporters.
South Waziristan hugs Afghanistan's insurgency-hit southeast province of Paktika, where Taliban remnants and other militants have been killing aid agency staff, troops and civil workers for over a year.
Officials suspect a large number of Al-Qaeda followers took refuge in the tribal belt after fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001 when the Taliban were toppled.
Around 150 foreign fighters have been killed in the tribal areas since last October, according to military officials.