Troops battled Taleban militants in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, killing 11 in an insurgent stronghold overlooking the Afghan border, an official said. Jamil Khan, a government representative in Bajur, said eight insurgents died and several others were injured when helicopters and artillery shelled several areas on Sunday morning. Three more insurgents died in a gunbattle at a checkpoint in Tang Khata, a village supposedly under the control of security forces, Khan said. He said there were no troop casualties. US officials have praised the two-month offensive in Bajur, a tribally governed region considered a possible hiding place for Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman Al-Zawahri. Pakistan's army launched an offensive in Bajur in early August after officials declared it a ´mega-sanctuary? for Taleban and Al-Qaeda militants who had set up a virtual mini-state and were funneling fighters over the mountainous border into Afghanistan. On Saturday, the military escorted reporters to Loi Sam, a strategic town captured earlier in the week from militants. The town sits at the intersection of roads linking Bajur with the Afghan border and several neighboring areas of Pakistan and military commanders say its fall will severely disrupt militant operations. But the operation has also caused severe hardship for residents in the already impoverished region. Almost 200,000 people have fled the fighting, many to rough camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Loi Sam and villages along the road from the main town of Khar have been devastated by fighting and army shelling. Crops have been left to die untended in the fields. Despite the civilian exodus, the army said Saturday that 95 noncombatants as well as some 1,500 militants and 73 troops had died so far in the fighting. Officials say the victims will be compensated. Pakistan's government has pledged to flood the border regions with development aid in an attempt to dry up support for militant groups. It has also offered to negotiate with groups who lay down their arms, seeking to turn a tide of rising violence that has contributed to Pakistan's looming economic problems. The South Asian country is in talks with the International Monetary Fund and other lenders about receiving help to ward off a balance of payments crisis and prevent it from defaulting on its foreign debts. - AP __
