1,000 militants killed in Bajaur campaign: Pakistan

Pakistani forces have killed up to 1,000 Islamist militants in an offensive for control over the strategically key northwestern region of Bajaur this month, an army commander said on Friday.

Government forces launched an offensive in Bajaur in August and have been involved in heavy fighting since then.

"When we got into the intensity of battle it was like putting your hand in a wasps' hive," said Tariq Khan, a major-general in the Pakistan army who was posted to Bajaur recently and appointed Inspector General of the paramilitary Frontier Corps. "Everything was exploding around you," he told a group of reporters in Khar, the region's main town, on a visit organised by the army.

Bajaur is the smallest of Pakistan's seven so-called tribal agencies, semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun regions along the Afghan border, with a population of just one million people.

But it provides access to surrounding Pakistani regions as well as the eastern Afghan province of Kunar.

U.S. officials say Taliban and al Qaeda-linked fighters, financed by drug money, use the tribal regions as an operating base to launch attacks inside Afghanistan, where Western forces are struggling to stem a growing insurgency.

Pakistan has been under mounting pressure from the United States to eliminate militant sanctuaries in its northwest.

The militants have also unleashed a bloody bombing campaign in Pakistani cities.

Khan estimated 65 percent of the militant problem would be eliminated if they were defeated in Bajaur, describing the region as a "centre of gravity" for the Islamist guerrillas.

"If they lose here, they've lost almost everything," said Khan, an ethnic Pashtun army officer.

There are around 9,000 regular army and paramilitary Frontier Corps soldiers deployed in Bajaur.