By Aamir Latif
ISLAMABAD
Three army soldiers and 20 Taliban militants were killed in a cross-border attack on a security post in restless North Waziristan, in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, officials said.
The Pakistani army's media wing, the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), said that a group of Taliban militants had launched a massive attack from Afghanistan on a security check post in the Spinwam area of North Waziristan.
The troops, said the army press office, "valiantly" repulsed the attack; and killed 20 militants, while another attacker was apprehended.
"Three troops also embraced Shahadat (martyrdom) in the attack," it said, adding that the Taliban militants fled leaving behind three dead bodies.
The attack occurred just a couple of days after the Afghan authorities expressed their displeasure over the digging of a 480-kilometers-long trench along the border between two countries, which Pakistan says serves to counter the cross-border infiltration as well as the flow of illegal drugs.
Islamabad claims that the Pakistani Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah, along with his aides, has been hiding in northeastern Afghanistan, an area from which militants have been launching attacks on Pakistani security forces.
Afghanistan denies the claim.
www.aa.com.tr/en
