The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that fighting between the Pakistani military and militants in the autonomous tribal districts on the Afghan border has driven 20,000 to flee as refugees into Afghanistan. The exodus from the Bajaur tribal agency into Afghanistan's Kunar province echoes the earlier mass exodus across the border—but in the opposite direction. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, an estimated five million Afghans fled to neighboring countries, chiefly Pakistan. The UNHCR and aid agencies are rushing emergency supplies to the Kunar refugees. (NYT, Sept. 29)

Three Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants hurled grenades in an hour-long battle and then blew themselves up after police raided their hideout in Karachi Sept. 26, with authorities saying preventing they prevented major attack in the country's biggest city. "We have saved Karachi from death and destruction. We know who they were and what was their target in Karachi, but we cannot disclose it immediately," Sind provincial police chief Babar Khattak told AFP. The incident occurred hours before Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was due in the city, although there was no official indication that he was the target. Police said they also found the body of a kidnapped local businessman who supplied fuel to NATO forces in Afghanistan, and recovered arms and explosives.

Pakistani soldiers fired at US OH-58 Kiowa reconnaissance helicopters that were escorting Afghan and US ground troops along the volatile border Sept. 25, sparking a five-minute ground battle between the countries' military forces. Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari, in New York meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said only "flares" were fired at the helicopters, and that they had strayed across the border from Afghanistan into his country's territory. The incursion reportedly took place near Saidgai, in the Ghulam Khan region of North Waziristan.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sept. 23 the Pentagon could send thousands more combat troops to Afghanistan starting next spring—but also warned: "I think we need to think about how heavy a military footprint the United States ought to have in Afghanistan. Are we better off channeling resources into building and expanding the size of the Afghan national army as quickly as possible, as opposed to a much larger Western footprint in a country that has never been notoriously hospitable to foreigners?" There are now some 31,000 US troops in Afghanistan and roughly an equal number of coalition troops. (AP, Sept. 23)

The US Defense Department has denied that its helicopters flew into Pakistan's airspace above from across the border with Afghanistan Sept. 22. Pakistani intelligence officials say US two helicopters flew into North Waziristan, but returned to Afghanistan after troops and tribesmen opened fire. "There was no such incursion, there was no such event," said Pentagon spokesman Col. Gary Keck. Anonymous Pakistani sources said the incursion took place near Lwara Mundi village late on Sept. 21. Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari told NBC that the US was forbidden from allowing any operations without permission. "If the American troops are coming in without letting us know, without the Pakistani permission, they are violating the United Nations charter." (AlJazeera, Sept. 23)

Eleven police officers and two insurgents were killed in a rebel attack in western Afghanistan's Herat province Sept. 21. "We lost 11 policemen. They were attacked while on a patrol in a village near their headquarters in Salama Dam," said Herat Gov. Sayed Gul Chishti. The police were guarding the hydroelectric dam, which is being built by Indian engineers, when they came under attack by rebels loyal to Ghulam Mustafa, a former Mujahedeen commander "who has now joined the Taliban," Chishti said. Mustafa admitted his men killed the police but denied his links to the Taliban, in a telephone interview with the French AFP news agency. "I'm not with the Taliban. We killed 10 policemen. They were the ones attacking us first," the rebel commander told AFP. (AlJazeera, Sept. 21)

Pakistan's government is blaming al-Qaeda operatives for the deadly Sept. 21 blast at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. The attacker failed to get through a secondary barrier when he crashed his explosive-laden truck into the hotel's security gates, killing 53 and wounding over 250. The bomb went off close to 8 PM, when the hotel's restaurant was packed with Muslim diners breaking their daily Ramadan fast. The head of Pakistan's Interior Ministry Rehman Malik said the blast left a crater 18 meters wide and seven deep, shattering the front of the hotel and igniting an intense fire that left the building in ruins.

Pakistan's army chief harshly criticized the US military for making unilateral cross-border raids from Afghanistan Sept. 12. Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, Chief of Army Staff, said there was "no agreement or understanding with the coalition forces whereby they are allowed to conduct operations on our side of the border." Pakistan would defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity "at all costs," he said.