Rocket attack kills one Pakistani soldier, wounds 4

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan, Apr 2 (Reuters) A rocket attack by pro-Taliban tribal militants near the Afghan border killed one Pakistani soldier and wounded four others, security officials said today.

The attack yesterday night targeted a fort in the Dattakhel area, some 30 km west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, a semi-autonomous Pashtun tribal region at the centre of the Pakistan army's campaign to drive out nests of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Last month, President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, warned foreign militants hiding in the tribal region to leave Pakistan or face annihilation.

''The dead man is a soldier of the Pakistan army, and among the wounded one are an army captain and three militiamen,'' an official, who requested anonymity, told Reuters.

Security forces returned fire but the attackers escaped in the darkness and it was unknown if they suffered any casualties.

Around 200 tribesmen were killed in clashes with security forces in early March after they answered a call to arms by militant Muslim clerics following a special forces assault on an al Qaeda camp in the area.

A large number of al Qaeda remnants and Taliban fled to Pakistan's tribal regions after U S-led forces toppled the radical Taliban regime in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York.

REUTERS CS HT1227