Islamabad, Pakistan - The Pakistani Army broadly condemned on Wednesday what it said was an airstrike by United States-led coalition forces that killed 11 Pakistani paramilitary soldiers during a clash with Afghan troops on the border with Afghanistan late Tuesday.

Pakistani villagers carry a coffin of a Pakistan paramilitary soldier who lost his life during a clash at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Wednesday, June 11, 2008. Pakistan's army has accused the US-led coalition of killing 11 Pakistani paramilitary troops in an airstrike along the Afghan border.

(Photo: AP / Moahammad Sajjad)

    Calling the airstrike "unprovoked and cowardly," the Pakistani military said the deaths "hit at the very basis of cooperation" in the battle against terrorism, according to an army statement quoted by news agencies. "Such acts of aggression do not serve the common cause of fighting terrorism," it said.

    The precise circumstances surrounding the reported deaths remained unclear and there was no immediate confirmation or comment from the United States military.

    But if the reports are confirmed, they come at a time of some rising tension between the United States and the new government in Pakistan, which has granted wide latitude to militants in its border areas under a new series of peace deals.

    NATO and American commanders say cross-border attacks in Afghanistan have surged since talks for those peace deals began in March.

    News agencies reported that militants based in Pakistan had sought to infiltrate Afghanistan, provoking a counter-attack late Tuesday from forces within Afghanistan, during which the Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed.

    The exact identity or make-up of the Afghan-based counter-attacking forces was not immediately known. The United States has about 34,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, part of an international presence totaling some 60,000.

    The news agency reports suggested that the Pakistani soldiers were killed in a missile strike from across the border.

    Pakistani newspapers also reported an airstrike in the area by a pilot-less United States drone, although it was not clear if these reports referred to the same airstrike. There have been several such strikes on insurgents inside Pakistani territory.

    The clash occurred at a border post called Chopara on the border with the Afghan province of Kunar, where American and Afghan forces have battled insurgents, including a number of Arabs, for several years.

    The insurgents have been using Mohmand and the adjacent area of Bajaur as a base for cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.

    Fighting has been reported on the Afghan side of the border between insurgents and Afghan and United States forces. According to one news report, one militant was killed and three wounded in a firefight Monday.

    The dead on the Pakistani side included a major and were all from the Mohmand Rifles, a paramilitary detachment of the Frontier Corps, the force deployed in Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, a security official said, speaking in return for customary anonymity.

    Officers in the Frontier Corps are generally assigned from the Pakistani Army.

    The bodies of the dead were being flown to the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Wednesday morning, the government official said.

    Among five wounded were three civilians, he said.

    Heavily armed local tribesmen brandishing rocket launchers and Kalashnikov rifles gathered Wednesday near the check post that was reportedly attacked during the airstrike in the mountainous Gora Prai area to show their outrage after the attack, residents said, Agence-France Press reported.

    Earlier this month, the American commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said that Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan were fleeing to the Pakistani border after being routed in recent operations by the United States Marines.

    The NATO commander, Gen. Dan K. McNeill, seemed to warn Pakistan to contain the threat emanating from its land, and said the Taliban and drug traffickers have long used refugee camps across the border as a sanctuary from American firepower.

    He said that if the Taliban and foreign insurgents continued to enjoy free sanctuary outside Afghanistan, their numbers would continue to grow.

    The new Pakistani government sought peace deals with the militants after many Pakistanis saw a drastic increase in suicide bombings in Pakistan as being in retaliation for American strikes.

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    Carlotta Gall reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Graham Bowley from New York. Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar.

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