WANA, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistani troops have hemmed in Al-Qaeda-linked foreign fighters and their local allies hiding in tribal border regions with a series of military assaults, a top Pakistani general said.
"We have eliminated a number of terrorists' hideouts in the region and ... their operational space has been reduced to a considerable degree," Major General Niaz Khatak told reporters in Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border.
A team of foreign and local journalists was taken to nearby Shakai valley where the army carried out a major air and ground offensive in June, destroying a suspected Al-Qaeda training camp and several hideouts.
The operation in picturesque Shakai valley, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) north of Wana, left around 65 militants dead at the cost of 18 troops.
Military officials said troops earlier this month discovered a cellar during inspections of one of the destroyed hideouts in Shakai and found computers, arms and ammunition as well as documents including the passport of a Jordanian national, Abdullah Khalid Mohammad.
"We are investigating who this Jordanian is and whether he is one of the Al-Qaeda operatives," a military official said.
Since the June onslaught operations have been expanded to other areas, with jets destroying a militant training camp at Khanigurram, 25 kilometers northeast of Wana, killing some 50 mainly Uzbek and Chechen fighters.
Military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said troops and militants were trading fire in the Karwan Manzai area near Khanigurram on Saturday.
"The exchange of fire is going on between security forces and miscreants and one or two soldiers have been injured," he said.
"We have no information so far on casualties among the miscreants. The miscreants have taken positions at heights in Karwan Manzai from where they are firing at citizens and security forces in Khanigurram."
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 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.
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, suspected by many to be hiding in Pakistan's border regions.
"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 more than a year.
Officials suspect some 600-700 Al-Qaeda followers remain in the tribal belt out of those who fled 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.