ISLAMABAD: Suspected Taliban militants set off a roadside bomb that killed seven paramilitary soldiers today in a rugged tribal region of northwestern Pakistan, while government jets pounded Taliban hideouts elsewhere and killed at least 15 fighters, officials said.

The paramilitary soldiers were travelling through the Khyber region, famed for the pass that is the main route for ferrying supplies to US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, when the bomb went off, said local official Ghulam Farooq Khan. The men died before they reached a hospital.

That attack came as Pakistani jets bombed three hideouts of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud in the Orkazai tribal region, killing at least eight militants and wounding several others, intelligence officials said. Another airstrike, about 70 kilometres from the first one and near the Afghan border, killed seven militants in the Kurram tribal region, the officials said. Access to the tribal areas, semiautonomous regions where the Pakistani government has long had only minimal control, is heavily restricted, andverifying government reports is all but impossible.