PESHAWAR: Pakistani jet fighters bombed a meeting of an Islamist group blamed for attacking NATO supply convoys in a northern tribal area bordering Afghanistan, killing at least 42 militants. The airstrike targeted a meeting of Laskhar-e-Islam in the remote Tirah valley of Khyber tribal district, they said. "At least 42 militants of Lashkar-e-Islam were killed and two militant hideouts were also destroyed," Khyber administration chief Shafeerullah Wazir told AFP. "The death toll may rise as dozens of others were also injured in the airstrike," Wazir said. A military official and another tribal administration official confirmed the incident and death toll. "The airstrike was launched on a tip-off that a meeting of the Laskhar-e-Islam group was going on in Tirah," the military official told AFP. Lashkar-e-Islam, which means Army of Islam, is a criminal homegrown Islamist group with ties to the Taliban that has stirred up trouble in Khyber and attacked NATO supply vehicles travelling through the area. Khyber is on the main NATO land supply route through Pakistan into Afghanistan, where more than 121,000 foreign forces are battling to reverse an escalating Taliban insurgency, now into its ninth year. The district neighbours the northwestern city of Peshawar, increasingly on the frontline of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked bomb attacks. Pakistan has launched several operations in the past two years in Khyber to flush out militants. US officials consider northwest Pakistan a haven for Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan to regroup and launch attacks on foreign troops across the border.