Pakistani jets attack militants, 42 killed

KALAYA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani jet fighters struck militant hideouts in the Orakzai region Monday, killing 42 insurgents, government and security officials said, the latest in a series of assaults on militants in the country's northwest.

Warplanes attacked militant positions in three areas of the Orakzai region where government forces have intensified attacks in recent weeks after largely clearing Taliban strongholds in other areas.

"Our jet fighters carried out strikes after information that militants were present in these areas," said one security official, who declined to be identified.

A government official, Nauman Khan, said 42 militants were killed and 18 wounded in the air assaults.

A Taliban spokesman, Hafiz Saeed, confirmed the attacks but denied any casualties, saying the jet fighters only bombed abandoned houses.

The military says several hundred Taliban fighters have been killed in Orakzai in recent weeks but there has been no independent confirmation of that. The Taliban usually dispute the army's accounts of engagements.

Despite heavy losses, militants have been to able to hit back and have carried out a wave of bomb and gun attacks, killing hundreds of people across the country.

Taliban militants killed between at least 84 people in attacks on worshippers from a minority religious group known as Ahmadis in two mosques of the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore Friday.

And Monday in Narowal, a town 80 km (50 miles) northeast of Lahore, a man stabbed an Ahmadi man to death and wounded his son.

Police said they had arrested the attacker and were investigating whether the attack was religiously motivated or if it involved a personal feud.

The Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims, but many in Pakistan, including the government, do not. In 1974, Pakistan became the only Muslim state to declare Ahmadis non-Muslims and prohibited the open practice of their faith.

After the Lahore attacks, a spokesman for the Pakistan Taliban said the Ahmadis had been targeted specifically for their faith, which includes the belief in other prophets after Mohammad.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan joined the U.S.-led campaign against militancy after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Pakistani action against militants along the Afghan border is seen as crucial for U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

(Reporting by Hasan Mahmood and Zeeshan Haider; Writing by Augustine Anthony; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Sugita Katyal)