Pakistani security forces fought Taliban militants on the outskirts of the main city in the north-west’s Swat Valley and entered two other Taliban-held towns there, the army said today, foreshadowing what could become bloody urban battles.

TROOPS secured footholds yesterday in a Pakistani valley overrun by the Taliban, killing 11 militants and discovering five headless corpses near the region’s main town, the army said.

Refugees gave harrowing accounts of life under the Taliban in Pakistan’s Swat Valley as they swarmed into camps to escape fighting between the army and militants.

PAKISTANI commandos dropped from helicopters behind Taliban lines in the Swat Valley in a widening offensive that the military said has pushed the number fleeing fighting in the north-west to 1.3 million.

Pakistani commandos were helicoptered behind Taliban lines in the Swat Valley today as part of a widening offensive.

A hard-line Muslim cleric led a peace march in Pakistan’s Taliban stronghold of the Swat Valley today aimed at persuading them to accept a government peace deal.

A Pakistani militant spokesman has welcomed a pro-Taliban leader’s release but says the rebels will continue fighting for Islamic law in the northwest.

A suicide bomber attacked an anti al-Qaida peace meeting attended by thousands of tribe members in north-western Pakistan today, killing at least 40 people in the third suicide blast in the region in as many days.

Seven people were killed, including two children, when a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a police outpost today in Pakistan’s Swat valley, the site of an ongoing military operation against Islamic militants loyal to a fugitive cleric.

Washington’s second most senior diplomat will have a crucial meeting with Pakistan’s military leader President Pervez Musharraf today, hoping that face-to-face diplomacy will convince the general to move back on the path to democracy.

Security forces backed by helicopter gunships killed 10 suspected insurgents today in a mountainous valley in north-western Pakistan, where the government is battling supporters of a militant pro-Taliban cleric, the military said.

Militants have killed all 11 men they kidnapped from a minibus in apparent retaliation for an assault by security forces on the stronghold of a militant cleric in north-western Pakistan, a police official said today.

Authorities recovered the beheaded bodies of four security forces in north-western Pakistan today after militant supporters of a hard-line cleric publicly executed them, officials said.

Suicide bombers struck today in two areas of north-western Pakistan, killing up to 38 people, while Taliban militants broke a 10-month-old peace pact with the government along the frontier with Afghanistan.

Three blasts struck a military convoy in north-western Pakistan today, killing 14 people in an intensifying militant campaign of violence against the government in the restive border region, an army spokesman said.

Thousands of troops were deployed to north-west Pakistan to try dissuading outlawed Islamic militants from launching a holy war against the government for its bloody attack on a radical mosque, officials said today.