KHAR (Pakistan) - PAKISTANI jets and artillery killed 17 people, including some Uzbek commanders, as they pounded suspected Taleban and Al-Qaeda hideouts in a tribal area, officials said on Thursday.

The rebels were killed in overnight jet attacks and Thursday morning artillery and mortar bombardments at four places in Bajaur district, part of the troubled region bordering Afghanistan, government and security officials said.

A security official said the dead included four Uzbek commanders who were trained Al-Qaeda militants involved in the recent killings and abductions of members of a tribal force known as a lashkar, which was formed last month to help purge the area of insurgents.

Local government official Mohammad Jamil said two Uzbek commanders had died in the attacks.

'The air strikes killed a total of 17 militants, two of them were Uzbeks,' he said.

Residents said helicopters circled overhead during the Thursday morning artillery attack.

Mr Jamil said the operation was launched late on Wednesday after several people were killed on Monday in fighting between militants and the lashkar.

In that fighting, dozens of militants ambushed the lashkar and later besieged the house where the group of elders had taken refuge.

The heavily armed rebels killed four tribal elders and abducted several others including an influential tribal chief, Ismail Khan, officials said.

Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt became a stronghold for hundreds of extremists who fled Afghanistan after the US-led invasion toppled the hardline Taleban regime in late 2001.

The Pakistani military is fighting Taleban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants in the Bajaur district, where officials say more than 1,500 rebels have been killed while hundreds more militants have been captured since August.

Pakistani jets also killed 20 militants in attacks on militant centres in the northwestern Swat valley, security officials said.

'The jets bombed selected targets and destroyed a training centre and five residential compounds in Matta district,' a military spokesman in the area told AFP.

'The militants suffered heavy losses but we cannot immediately give the exact figure,' he said.

Local security officials said at least 20 people were killed and several others wounded in the bombing of the mountainous Swat valley, which was was until last year a popular tourist destination, featuring Pakistan's only ski resort.

The Swat region has been turned into a battleground since cleric Maulana Fazlullah, who has links to Pakistan's Taleban movement, launched a violent campaign for the introduction of Sharia law. -- AFP

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