Rival militants battle in Pakistan's Khyber region

By Ibrahim Shinwari

LANDIKOTAL, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani militant factions clashed in the Khyber region near the Afghan border on Sunday as the toll from two days of fighting rose to up to 15 dead and dozens wounded, a government official said.

The region, home to the Khyber Pass through which vital supplies for Western forces in Afghanistan pass, had been virtually free of militant violence until this year but security has deteriorated in recent months.

The latest violence began on Saturday when loyalists of one militant leader, Mangal Bagh, who is vying to control the area, attacked a stronghold of rivals led by Ustad Mehboob in the Teerah Valley.

The two sides were fighting with rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades and there were conflicting accounts of casualties.

"There's a lot of speculation but we have reports of 12 to 15 dead, from both sides, and dozens wounded," said a government official in the region who declined to be identified.

Mehmoob's group, Ansar-ul-Islam, said over its FM radio station they had killed 18 members of Bagh's Lashkar-e-Islami and captured 10.

The fighting was not near the main road through the Khyber Pass to the Afghan border but residents said more militants had recently been using the road, adding to a sense of insecurity.

Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan was kidnapped in February while traveling along the road. He was freed in May.

Many supplies for the U.S. military and other foreign forces in landlocked Afghanistan go through two crossing points on the Afghan-Pakistani border, one at the top of the Khyber Pass and the other to the southwest, at the Afghan town of Spin Boldak.

Pakistan's top Interior Ministry official, Rehman Malik, said the government would restore order. "In next few days, you'll see action," Malik told reporters in Islamabad.

In a related development, members of Bagh's group freed 16 Christians on Sunday, a day after they abducted them on the outskirts of Peshawar city over a property dispute, police said.

(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel and Valerie Lee)