Tribesmen leaving an underground hideout where they had taken refuge to escape bloody gunbattles between two rival pro-Taleban groups near the remote town of Bara in Khyber district, yesterday.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Gunmen loyal to rival pro-Taleban clerics fought street battles in Pakistan’s tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, leaving at least 26 people dead, officials said yesterday.

The clashes erupted late on Monday after supporters of a Pakistani preacher tried to knock down a house which belonged to an Afghan Islamic leader’s faction, a tribal areas spokesman said.

The fighting with automatic weapons near the remote town of Bara in Khyber district follows about a year of tensions during which the two mullahs have used illegal private FM radio stations to criticise each other.

Spokesman Shah Zaman said five of Pakistani cleric Mufti Munir Shakir’s men were shot dead late on Monday when they attempted to demolish the Afghan clan’s house. In retaliation, Shakir’s men attacked tribesmen of Afghan rival Pir Saifur Rehman at around 2:00 am (2100 GMT) yesterday, killing 18 of them, Zaman said.

Another two of Shakir’s men injured in the shooting later died, a local administration official said on condition of anonymity.

The situation was tense in the area and the local administration was trying to end fighting through a jirga, or tribal assembly, Zaman said.

Both clerics are supporters of Afghanistan’s former Taleban regime, many members of which fled across the border to Pakistan’s tribal areas after the fundamentalist movement was ousted by a US-led invasion in late 2001.

The Pakistani tribesmen had also taken an unknown number of people hostage, an intelligence official said. “The attackers have taken hostage women and children,” one intelligence officer said, requesting anonymity.

Tensions are already high in the border region following major clashes earlier this month between troops and pro-Taleban militants in the North Waziristan tribal area, which have left more than 200 insurgents dead.

Suspected militants blew up a checkpost in Patosi village, some 25km east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, late Monday, a security official said.

Separately a rocket fired by insurgents late on Monday fell close to government buildings in Miranshah where Pakistani troops are camped, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Neither attack caused any casualties, he said.

After an earlier armed clash between the two groups, the security forces intervened to force both the clerics out of the tribal areas.

Although the two clerics have been in hiding since then, their followers continued to fight for control of the territory.