Pakistan's military said they killed dozens of militants in a series of raids near the Afghanistan border, days after Taliban fighters killed more than 140 people — most of them children — at a school in Peshawar, AP reported.
Ground forces moved in on the militants in the Khyber tribal region, close to the Afghan border, killing 32 alleged terrorists in an ambush in the Tirah valley.
A separate operation by ground forces in Khyber on Thursday killed 10, while jets killed another 17, including a commander from Uzbekistan, the military said.
A senior Pakistani Taliban leader was also killed in the southern province of Baluchistan, along with seven associates in pre-dawn raids, a tribal police officer told AP.
Along with North Waziristan, Khyber is one of two main areas in Pakistan's northwest where Pakistani security forces have been clamping down on militant activity in recent months, AP reported.
Militants have traditionally attacked the city of Peshawar, before heading back to rural areas in bordering Khyber, where police can't track them.
In a separate development, Pakistan's Dawn News reported that at least four suspects, including one woman, were arrested in Hasilpur, Punjab, in connection with the Peshawar massacre.
They were tracked using a mobile phone SIM card reportedly used by one of the terrorists who conducted the attack, police said.
And in a separate development, a Pakistani prosecutor said the government will try to cancel the bail granted to a suspect in the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai — a decision which caused outrage in India yesterday.
The army also said its chief, General. Raheel Sharif, had signed the death warrants for six "hard core terrorists" who had been convicted and handed the death penalty by military courts. No information was provided on the men or the crimes they committed, AP said.