PESHAWAR: Pakistan yesterday offered a $615,000 (BD 232,000) reward for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of local Taliban head Baitullah Mehsud, currently holed up in the tribal belt. Two national Urdu-language newspapers and local papers in the northwest city of Peshawar carried an advert offering the 50-million-rupee reward for Mehsud, and other amounts for 10 of his senior militants.

"The government has announced a cash reward for anybody providing authentic information leading to the capture of them, dead or alive," said the advertisement. It then lists the wanted men, along with their bounties.

"Innocent people are being killed because of the bloody activities of these so-called defenders of Islam," the advert adds.

Fighter jets and helicopter gunships have been pounding Mehsud's hideouts for weeks, ahead of an expected ground offensive following a similar operation to root out Taliban in and around northwest Swat Valley launched in late April.

Fayyaz Tooro, home secretary of the North West Frontier Province, said it was the first time Pakistan had slapped a figure on Al Qaeda-linked Mehsud.

Mehsud already has a $5 million bounty on his head offered by the US, with the State Department branding the warlord "a key Al Qaeda facilitator in the tribal areas of South Waziristan."

Pakistan blames him for a wave of deadly attacks killing hundreds of people here in two years of insurgency, and has vowed to unseat him from his fiefdom in the peaks of northwest South Waziristan.

All but two of the 10 other wanted men hail from the tribal belt, with bounties of between 10 and 15 million rupees each for his close aides Maulvi Faqir Mohammad and Qari Hussain and Taliban spokesman Hakimullah Mehsud.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani yesterday said the Swat operation would be over soon, but made no mention of the tribal belt campaign.

Meanwhile, 13 Pakistani troops and 18 Taliban militants have died in clashes and air bombardments in the tribal belt as violence spikes in the northwest region.

At least 12 soldiers were killed when their convoy came under attack yesterday in Gharlamai area near Wachabibi village, 45km west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.

In a separate incident, insurgents fired rockets at Pakistani forces at a South Waziristan paramilitary Frontier Corps camp, killing an officer and injuring three soldiers. l New attacks linked to a spreading Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan killed 29 people including seven civilians and seven policemen.