Pro-govt tribesman killed in Pakistan's Waziristan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 28 (Reuters) Suspected Islamist militants today shot dead a pro-government tribal chief in Pakistan's restive North Waziristan region, officials said.

Five masked men attacked and killed Malik Takhti Khan Bakakhel in the main market of Mir Ali town in an area where security forces are fighting al Qaeda militants and their Taliban allies.

Bakakhel backed the government's efforts to flush out foreign militants in the region that straddles with Afghanistan, local administration official, Mohammad Fida Khan, said.

''He had very strong links with government and that's why he was killed,'' Khan told Reuters.

A number of government officials and tribal elders have been killed in Waziristan in recent years for supporting the government or over suspicions of acting as informers for US forces operating across the border in Afghanistan.

Many al Qaeda and Taliban militants fled to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal region after they were chased out of Afghanistan by US-backed forces in 2001.

REUTERS SY RK1528