By ROHAN SULLIVAN
Associated Press

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday that talk of U.S. military strikes against al-Qaida in Pakistan only hurts the fight against terrorism, and his troops bombarded militant hideouts in their strongest response yet to a month of anti-government attacks. Ten suspected militants were killed.

The assault by artillery and helicopter gunships “knocked out” two compounds in Daygan village in the tribal belt near the border with Afghanistan that were being used as staging posts for attacks on security forces, said Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the army’s top spokesman.

Ten militants were killed and at least seven were wounded in the operation, about 10 miles west of Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan region, he said.

No ground troops were used in the operation, and the report on militant casualties was based on information from “local sources,” he said without elaborating.

There were at least four smaller’scale bombings and shootings in the border region Tuesday, the latest in almost daily violence that has intensified pressure on Musharraf to crack down on militants in the area.

Musharraf, a key ally in Washington’s war against terrorism, told visiting Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., that comments by senior U.S. officials and presidential hopefuls about the possibility of unilateral U.S. strikes within the country were not helpful. Musharraf met Durbin in the southern city of Karachi.

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