PESHAWAR: Dozens of heavily armed Taliban militants attacked a Pakistani military post on Tuesday, sparking clashes that killed seven soldiers and wounded another 10, the military said.

Helicopter gunships were mobilised when the fighting broke out in the same Jogi area as clashes that killed six soldiers on Jan 25 in the Kurram tribal region.

At the time, security forces claimed to have taken control of Jogi, which is strategically located near the Orakzai tribal region, birthplace of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud.

A senior military official told AFP that “more than 300 Taliban militants attacked” the checkpost at around midnight in central Kurram, which is on the Taliban route into North Waziristan and onto the Afghan border.

Security forces retaliated and killed around 25 militants, but seven soldiers were also killed and 10 others wounded, the official said.

Independent confirmation of death tolls is largely impossible in the tribal belt, a Taliban and Al-Qaeda stronghold barred to journalists and aid workers.

“Heavy fighting continued until this morning,” the military official said.

Local administration official Sher Bahadur confirmed the military deaths but put the number of wounded paramilitary at 12.

Last July, Pakistan launched an offensive to evict militants from Kurram, mirroring operations that it has carried out — with limited success — across much of the rest of the tribal belt, only for militants to regroup and return.