Militants kill 6 Pakistani security forces

Militant attacks killed six Pakistani security forces Monday, officials said, a day after the Taliban chief warned of terrorist strikes across the country if the army did not stop a major offensive against insurgents along the Afghan border.

The army moved into South Waziristan tribal region nine days ago vowing to crush the Pakistani Taliban, a militant network it says is behind 80 percent of the suicide bombings in Pakistan. Washington backs the operation because militants in the northwest region are believed to shelter al-Qaida leaders and attack Western troops in Afghanistan.

Heavily armed militants assaulted security officials in Toraware village overnight, killing two and wounding four in a three-hour shootout in the area some 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of South Waziristan, police officer Mir Chaman Khan said. Some 10 militants were believed to have been killed.

In Bajur, a tribal region further north, Taliban fighters attacked a checkpoint at Matthak village, killing four security officials. Seven militants died in the clash, said Syed Ghulam Rasool, a local government official. The militants also attacked security check posts at Khar, the main town in Bajur, and Siddiqabad, an adjoining village, wounding at least three security personnel.

Militant attacks in Pakistan have surged this month, killing more than 200 people, as the Taliban have tried to avert the army offensive in South Waziristan. The military announced Saturday its first major achievement in the offensive _ the capture of Kotkai, Mehsud's hometown. The army said the town had hosted a training camp for suicide bombers.

Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud remained defiant Sunday. He said in a telephone call to an Associated Press reporter the militants had not suffered "any significant losses" in Waziristan. Mehsud, speaking from an undisclosed location, threatened to turn Pakistan into "another Afghanistan or Iraq" unless the assault stopped.

The army says troops have captured two key fronts between Kotkai and the key militant base of Sararogha. An army statement said troops secured at least one other important front and fought 16 hours to capture a significant mountaintop.

The militants have fled Kotkai and are sporadically attacking troops with rockets from high ground, the military said.

Independent verification of such reports is nearly impossible because the military has blocked access to South Waziristan. The tribal regions as a whole are difficult to access and largely off-limits to foreign journalists.

The army has deployed some 30,000 troops to South Waziristan to take on an estimated 12,000 militants, including up to 1,500 foreign fighters, among them Uzbeks and Arabs. The U.N. says some 155,000 civilians have fled.

In other violence Sunday, a minister for education was assassinated by gunmen in Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, police official Shahid Nizam said. A nationalist group, the Baluchistan United Liberation Front, claimed responsibility in calls to local media outlets.

The region has been the scene of a low-level insurgency for years to press demands for a greater share of oil and gas revenue in the province.

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Mahsud reported from Dera Ismail Khan. Associated Press writers Ashraf Khan in Islamabad, Habib Khan in Khar and Hussain Afzal in Parachinar contributed to this report.