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Pentagon: Over 100 insurgents killed near border

WASHINGTON - U.S. and NATO forces have killed more than 100 fighters from a Pakistan-based faction of the Taliban during two weeks of stepped-up military operations along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON - U.S. and NATO forces have killed more than 100 fighters from a Pakistan-based faction of the Taliban during two weeks of stepped-up military operations along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

The intensified border operations have contributed to tension between the United States and Pakistan that reached a critical point last week, when U.S. forces crossed into Pakistan and mistakenly killed three Pakistani frontier forces. Pakistan closed a key border crossing used to supply fuel to U.S. forces in Afghanistan in retaliation.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell expressed remorse for what he called a mistake by U.S. forces and said results of a joint NATO-Afghan investigation of the incident would be released Wednesday.

Morrell said U.S. and NATO forces targeted Haqqani network fighters using border areas as refuge in eastern Afghanistan.

"The threat is real, and though we've had success in killing 110 of them, there clearly are more of them out there who remain a threat to our forces," Morrell said, adding that the Islamist fighters also battle Afghan and Pakistani forces. The Haqqani network is a Pakistan-based faction of the Taliban with close ties to al-Qaeda.

The group was started by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a commander once supported by Pakistan and the U.S. during the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Haqqani has since turned against the U.S., and American military officials have said his organization - now effectively led by his son, Sirajuddin - presents one of the greatest threats to foreign forces in Afghanistan.

Morrell said he had not heard anything to suggest the U.S. will change the way its aircraft operate along the border, although he would not discuss specific rules of engagement.

The helicopter strike that killed the three Frontier Corps forces was the third such incursion into Pakistan in less than a week.

A small bomb damaged a truck in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday that was carrying oil to NATO troops in Afghanistan - the latest attack on stalled supply convoys since Pakistan shut the border crossing last week.

U.S. and Pakistani officials have said the Torkham crossing would probably reopen within a few days. U.S. military officials said the closure has not harmed delivery of fuel to U.S. forces, although alternate routes are less convenient and more expensive.