Gunship strikes kill 20 militants in NW Pakistan

A soldier crosses the road as a helicopter takes off from along the roadside in Malakand district, located near Pakistan's Swat Valley, about 170 km (106 miles) northwest by road of Pakistan's capital Islamabad, July 15, 2009.

LANDIKOTAL, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani helicopter gunships struck four militant hideouts in the northwestern Khyber Pass region on Monday, killing 20 insurgents, a spokesman for the paramilitary Frontier Corps said.

The Khyber Pass is a main route for supplies being trucked from the Pakistani port of Karachi to Western forces battling al Qaeda and Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

The airstrikes, launched in the remote Teerah Valley, follow a number of militant attacks in recent months on convoys transporting military equipment, fuel and food en route to Afghanistan.

Monday's attacks targeted insurgents under the command of Mangal Bagh, an ethnic Pashtun Islamist militant who has raised a militia to enforce strict Shariah laws in the tribal region.

Bagh has no links with the Taliban, according to government and security officials.

"We got credible information that Mangal Bagh men were assembled there and probably were planning some attacks, so we attacked them," the spokesman said.

Pakistani security forces have been conducting sporadic assaults in the region in a bid to secure the vital transport link for U.S. and other foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Those efforts are separate from the offensive the military launched in late April to rid the northwestern Swat valley of Taliban militants, after Taliban aggression and advances there prompted fears over the U.S. ally's stability and the safety of its nuclear weapons.

That operation is winding down, the military says, but it continues to face pockets of resistance.

Militant attacks on supply convoys in Pakistan have prompted the United States to look for alternate routes to bring in supplies to Afghanistan.

A U.S. official said in April the government expected soon to be able to send non-military cargo through Tajikistan, which borders Afghanistan to the north.

Chaman crossing in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan is another route for Western supplies to reach Afghanistan.

(Reporting by Ibrahim Shinwari; Writing by Kamran Haider; Editing by Jason Subler)