'Call of Duty' sells $310M in N Amer, UK in 24 hrs

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — First-day sales of Activision Blizzard Inc.'s "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" broke records, raking in an estimated $310 million in North America and the United Kingdom alone.

The video game went on sale all over the world on Tuesday, but Activision provided figures Thursday only for North America and Britain. The company estimates that it sold about 4.7 million copies of the game in the first 24 hours in those markets, making it the biggest-selling launch in the history of entertainment.

The latest installment in the "Call of Duty" action franchise was expected to at least match last year's "Grand Theft Auto IV," which was the most successful video game release in history and at the time may have been the top entertainment launch ever.

That game, from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., had sold 3.6 million units on its opening day, worth $310 million worldwide. "Call of Duty" made that much in just North America and Britain.

The launch of "Call of Duty" also easily brought in more than last year's record $155 million opening weekend for the Batman movie "The Dark Knight."

Like the previous five "Call of Duty" games, which are all rated "M" for mature (not for kids under 17), this one lets players shoot their way through a complex series of scenes. The game's developer, Infinity Ward, spent two years creating realistic graphics that are amplified in many players' homes by big-screen, high-definition TVs sets and powerful speakers.

Players can fight one another, whether they're at the same game console or in separate locations and connected online. Or a player can dive in alone and get swept into the game, which includes jarring depictions of war and an intricate story of good versus evil.

The game sells for $60 and plays on Windows-based computers, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3.

Shares of Activision, which is based in Santa Monica, rose 6 cents to close Thursday at $11.44.

Ida weakens to a depression, heads east to Fla.

PENSACOLA, Fla. — Tropical Storm Ida sloshed ashore with rain and gusty winds Tuesday before weakening to a depression, leaving weather-hardened Gulf Coast residents largely unscathed and bringing more rain to the already-soaked Southeast.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Ida's center first touched land on Dauphin Island, Ala., before heading across Mobile Bay toward the Alabama mainland and on to Florida.

Top sustained winds dropped to near 35 mph (55 mph) as Ida weakened and moved northeast at about 9 mph (15 kph). It was expected to turn east before being absorbed by a front Wednesday.

Pensacola Beach was windy and gray but mostly rain-free throughout Tuesday morning and early afternoon as residents ventured out after a night of howling storm gusts and drenching rains. Beachgoers collected seashells, driftwood and other treasures churned up by the rough surf.

Erin Strong of Memphis, Tenn., who rents a beach front home with her family each November, said she was unnerved by Ida's power.

"The waves came up to the front of our house," she said. "I couldn't believe the electricity stayed on the entire time."

Tropical storm warnings were discontinued Tuesday morning across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Forecasters said the storm had already spread most of its heavy rain onshore along the Gulf Coast ahead of Ida's center.

"The only thing it did to us is knock out the power," resident Jimmy Wentworth said as he sipped coffee outside the Ship&Shore convenience store in Dauphin Island, Ala. "Our houses and people are fine. I'm fine."

In Louisiana, authorities continued searching for 70-year-old fisherman Leo Ancalade, who was presumed dead after he was knocked off his boat by a wave as Ida approached Monday. The Coast Guard said he was towing friends whose small boat lost power in the Mississippi River near Fort Jackson.

No other U.S. deaths were reported, but earlier in the week, a low-pressure system that the hurricane may have helped attract triggered flooding and landslides in El Salvador that killed at least 130 people.

The storm shut down nearly a third of oil and natural gas production in the Gulf as companies moved workers ahead of Ida, but demand was so low due to the economic downturn that energy prices barely budged Tuesday. Oil companies were expected to fly workers back out to platforms relatively quickly to restart operations.

Scattered power outages were reported, but water that filled parking lots and roadsides in coastal Alabama late Monday was gone by daybreak Tuesday. The winds were brisk, whipping palm fronds and whistling through doors. On the beach, dry sand blew like snow in the glow of lights.

The storm left some debris and standing water in the streets on Dauphin Island but did not do much other damage.

Ankle-deep water pooled on roads in the island's lower-lying west end, where many residents had left their homes before Ida hit. A police officer standing guard said the extent of the damage was unknown.

Atlanta resident Mike White drove down Monday to see the storm and was watching breakers crash at Gulf Shores early Tuesday. The sky was clear overhead but there were clouds all around.

"This is spectacular," White said. "It's almost like we are in the eyewall."

In Orange Beach, east of Mobile Bay near the Florida state line, hotel desk clerk Frank Worley said Ida came ashore more like a thunderstorm than a hurricane.

"It was a lot of waves and wind, but it wasn't very harsh," he said.

The sun was out in Mississippi's easternmost coastal county, where authorities said the storm was pretty much over and water was already receding from about two dozen local roads that had flooded.

Patrick Keene, 71, and his wife, Kathie, live in a doublewide trailer in the shadow of the beach front home in Pascagoula, Miss., that they are rebuilding four years after Hurricane Katrina.

While his wife retreated to their son's home across the state Monday night, Keene and his dog rode out the storm in the trailer.

"We get summer squalls frequently that are as bad as this one," he said.

Ida started moving across the Gulf as the third hurricane of this year's quiet Atlantic tropical season, which ends Dec. 1, but weakened before it got to the U.S. Ronnie Powell, headed to his construction job on Pensacola Beach, wasn't impressed.

"We've had thunderstorms worse than that," he said.

Associated Press Writers Bill Kaczor in Pensacola, Greg Bluestein in Dauphin Island, Ala., Jay Reeves in Gulf Shores, Ala., and Mike Kunzelman in Pascagoula, Miss., contributed to this report.

Japanese to protest US base before Obama visit

GINOWAN, Japan — Thousands were expected to rally Sunday against a US military base on Japan's Okinawa island, raising the heat in a simmering row days before President Barack Obama visits Tokyo.

Local opposition has often flared against the large US military presence on the southern island, strategically located within easy reach of China, Taiwan and North Korea and dubbed the United States' "unsinkable aircraft carrier".

But the rise of a new centre-left government in Tokyo in September, ending decades of conservative rule, has brought the issue to the centre of national politics and strained Japan's most important security alliance.

More than 30,000 protesters were expected to gather from 0500 GMT in a park near the controversial US Marine Corps Futenma Air Base in Ginowan city, organisers said. Obama visits Japan on Friday and Saturday.

The Futenma base, located in a densely populated urban area, has emerged as a flashpoint for local opponents who have been angered by aircraft noise, pollution, the risk of accidents and crimes committed by US service personnel.

Okinawans reacted with fury to the 1995 rape of a schoolgirl by three US servicemen, and demands to close the base on safety grounds grew when a US helicopter crashed into the front yard of a local university in 2004.

The government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, which swept to power in a landslide and has vowed a less subservient relationship with Washington, has said it may want the base moved off the island or even out of the country.

The United States has demanded Japan honour a 2006 agreement under which the Futenma base would be closed but its air operations moved to an alternative site to be built on Okinawa by 2014 in the coastal Camp Schwab area.

But activists near Camp Schwab also oppose the planned new base, which would be built on reclaimed land and would include two runways likely to affect a marine habitat home to corals and an endangered sea mammal, the dugong.

On a visit to Japan last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates bluntly urged Tokyo to "move on" and resolve the issue before Obama's arrival, stressing that Washington does not want to renegotiate a pact that was years in the making.

Hatoyama has said Japan will need more time to resolve the tricky question as it weighs the demands of Washington and of the people of Okinawa, a heartland of left-leaning and pacifist groups who oppose the bases.

Subtropical Okinawa, located about 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) south of Tokyo, saw some of the bloodiest battles of World War II.

American occupation forces only handed the island back to Japan in 1972, but it continues to host more than half of the 47,000 US troops in the country.

Washington and Tokyo have been close security allies in the post-war era, with the United States guaranteeing Japan's defence and providing nuclear deterrence during and after the Cold War.

Japan's post-war constitution bars its Self-Defence Forces from offensive military action and Japanese soldiers abroad, despite limited deployments in Iraq and on peace-keeping missions, have not fired a shot in anger since WWII.

Four militants killed in US strike in Pakistan: officials

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan — At least four militants were killed in a US drone missile strike in Pakistan's tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said on Thursday.

The attack took place in Norak village of North Waziristan, an area where Washington says Islamist fighters are hiding out and planning attacks on Western troops stationed in neighbouring Afghanistan.

"It was a US drone attack which targeted a compound of a local tribesman, Musharraf Gul, in Norak village, killing four militants and wounding three others," a senior security official in the area told AFP.

He said two missiles were fired from a US drone at 1:30 am (2030 GMT Wednesday).

Another security official confirmed the attack and said "Taliban rebels were using the compound."

"It is not clear if there was any high-value target," he said, adding: "We also do not know yet the identity of the militants."

The latest attack came against the backdrop of a continuing military offensive in neighbouring South Waziristan, a stronghold of the feared Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Pakistan has vowed to quash Tehreek-e-Taliban in South Waziristan, part of the border area with Afghanistan that Washington calls the most dangerous place in the world because of the abundance of Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Pakistan launched its fierce air and ground offensive in the region on October 17, with 30,000 troops backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships laying siege to TTP boltholes.

So far, the military says it has killed more than 390 militants since the operation began, with 37 troops losing their lives.

The long-anticipated assault into South Waziristan came after a spring offensive in and around the northwestern Swat valley, which the government declared a success in July. However, sporadic outbreaks of violence continue.

The US military does not, as a rule, confirm drone attacks, but its armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy pilotless drones in the region.

The fatalities are impossible to verify independently because the targets are deep in Taliban-controlled territory.

Islamabad publicly opposes the US missile attacks, with 60 such strikes killing more than 580 people since August 2008.

But the Pakistani government welcomed the death of Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud on August 5.

Suicide bomber kills 35 near Pakistan's capital

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — A suicide bomb killed 35 people near Pakistan's military headquarters Monday while a second blast wounded several police, continuing a wave of terrorism that prompted the United Nations to suspend long-term development work near the Afghan border.

The rash of attacks by Islamist militants has killed at least 300 people across Pakistan over the past month — including 11 U.N. workers — and threatened to destabilize the nuclear-armed nation.

The violence has grown bloodier since the government launched an anti-Taliban offensive in mid-October, pushing into the impoverished and underdeveloped tribal region of South Waziristan. The U.N. decision to suspend non-emergency aid could weaken efforts to counter the appeal of extremism by improving ordinary people's daily lives.

The first suicide bomber Monday killed 35 people outside a bank near Pakistan's military headquarters in Rawalpindi, just a few miles (kilometers) from Islamabad.

Most of those waiting in line were from the military and were there to cash paychecks, said Mohammad Mushtaq, a wounded soldier.

"I was sitting on the pavement outside to wait for my turn," said Mushtaq, who suffered a head injury. "The bomb went off with a big bang. We all ran. I saw blood and body parts everywhere."

Four soldiers were killed in the attack and nine were wounded, said the army's chief spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas. In total, 35 people were killed, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said.

No group claimed responsibility for the bombing, though suspicion immediately fell on the Pakistani Taliban.

Hours later, another suicide bombing ripped through a police checkpoint on the outskirts of the eastern city of Lahore. At least seven policemen were wounded and two were in critical condition after a car with two men inside blew up as police went to search it.

"By putting their lives in danger, our men have saved the city from enormous sabotage," Lahore Police Chief Pervaiz Rathor told reporters at the scene.

Police checkpoints, where cars are forced to drive slowly past officers looking inside, have become common sights in Pakistan.

Pakistan's president and other top officials condemned the blasts but vowed to press on with the South Waziristan offensive. Taliban militants have de facto control in many of the semiautonomous tribal areas.

The U.S. has reportedly provided technical support to the South Waziristan offensive, seeing the rugged mountain area as a haven for Islamist extremists involved in attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan.

The government has sealed off the battle zone to outsiders, making confirmation of military reports impossible to confirm, but officials insist the offensive is going well.

On Monday, Abbas said the army had captured the Taliban town of Kaniguram and killed 12 militants in the past 24 hours.

Washington, which has long provided massive military assistance to Pakistan, has stepped up its efforts to use development aid in a broader battle against the spreading militancy. The U.S. government recently approved $7.5 billion in aid over five years to improve Pakistan's economy, education and other nonmilitary sectors.

But the U.N. decision to suspend long-term development work in Pakistan's tribal areas and its North West Frontier Province could complicate international efforts to win hearts and minds.

The world body will reduce the level of international staff in Pakistan and confine its work to emergency, humanitarian relief, and security operations, and "any other essential operations as advised by the secretary-general," the organization said in a statement.

The U.N. made its decision after losing 11 personnel in attacks in Pakistan this year, including last month's bombing of the World Food Program's office in Islamabad that killed five people, said U.N. spokeswoman Amena Kamaal. "All of the decisions are being made in light of that."

The U.N. has been deeply involved in helping Pakistan deal with refugee crises resulting from army offensives against militants — work that will apparently continue — but Kamaal said the organization was still determining which programs would be suspended and how many staffers would be withdrawn. Staff that remain in the country will be assigned additional security.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said Pakistan understood the U.N.'s decision, but said he hoped the organization would resume its work after the military completes the South Waziristan offensive.

Associated Press writers Zarar Khan and Nahal Toosi in Islamabad and Babar Dogar in Lahore contributed to this report.

Obama gets fresh sense of state of armed services

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama grappled Friday with the costs and consequences of a long-term commitment to Afghanistan, but reached no decisions about troop levels, a top aide said, as military advisers briefed the president on an armed services already taxed by challenges around the globe.

The president reviewed his options with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and made clear he wants at least one more meeting with them and with his broader national security team before deciding on a revamped war strategy for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, said a senior administration official.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of Obama's private deliberations.

Obama's much anticipated review of how to right a deteriorating war effort is nearing its end but still weeks away from being wrapped up. Once made, he is expected to explain his decision to the American public and the international community in a prominent way, such as a major address. The details are not yet set.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff includes the service chiefs from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. The group's main mission is to ensure that the armed forces are trained, ready, healthy and large enough to carry out the missions of the military. In that sense, the body plays a vital role in Obama's war planning.

Each of the chiefs spoke about the state of their military branch. They did not make recommendations to Obama about troop levels, the senior official said. Rather, they put Afghanistan in the context of all deployments, including an even larger war effort in Iraq, and reviewed options that the president is considering.

Among them is a request for 40,000 more troops from Obama's war commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the leader of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. McChrystal has bluntly warned of a deteriorating overall effort in Afghanistan and assessed that the war against insurgents will end in failure without more troops.

After eight years of war, the U.S. armed forces — particularly the Army and Marines — have endured repeated tours to the war zones, often for 12 to 18 months. Although Defense Secretary Robert Gates has vowed that troops will get to spend at least 12 months at home before they are sent back to the front lines, increased demands on the force could jeopardize that promise. Forces have also seen growing numbers of suicides and stress disorders that the services have struggled to confront. Increased war deployments could stretch that already stressed force.

The 90-minute meeting in the Situation Room was the seventh Obama has conducted with a range of military and national security advisers.

Obama gave the chiefs a rundown of the factors he is weighing, including how long it would take U.S. forces to achieve their goals in Afghanistan.

No timeline for the war effort was set, the official said.

The president also reiterated that no matter what he decides, the U.S. will maintain what the official called a "very robust commitment in Afghanistan."

Obama sent in 21,000 more troops this year, upping the U.S. posture there to 68,000 forces.

At least one more White House-Afghanistan meeting is set for next week.

Obama is considering sending a large numbers of additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan next year but fewer than McChrystal prefers, U.S. officials have told The Associated Press. Such a narrowed military mission would accomplish the commander's broadest goals, protecting Afghan cities and key infrastructure, but would cut back on McChrystal's most ambitious objectives.

Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

Obama draws to end of Afghan review: White House

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama is nearing the end of his Afghanistan war review, the White House said, as a report said the administration may pick a plan to secure 10 major population centers.

Obama will meet the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, to hear input on future Afghan and Pakistan policy from all branches of military services, as he edges towards a fateful decision on whether to deploy thousands more troops.

Multiple signs that Obama may be nearing a decisive moment followed the deaths of eight more US soldiers on the battlefield, making October the bloodiest month for American forces since the war began in 2001.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Air Force One that Obama's meeting with the joint chiefs was a sign the president was "getting, certainly, toward the end" of the policy review.

Gibbs repeated that Obama would make a final decision on Afghanistan, and General Stanley McChrystal's request for at least 40,000 more counter-insurgency troops "in the coming weeks."

The New York Times reported late Tuesday that Obama's advisers, after weeks of in-depth meetings, were coalescing around a strategy aimed at protecting about 10 top population centers in Afghanistan.

Stressing the president had yet to make a decision, the Times said the debate was not about whether to send more troops but how many more would be needed to safeguard most vital parts of the country.

The report mentioned four brigades, of about 4,500 troops each, that might form part of the new strategy.

Cities meriting protection would include Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat and Jalalabad, the paper said.

There was no immediate White House comment on the report.

Obama is under intense pressure, as rising violence in Afghanistan brings more US fatalities and a dip in popular support for a conflict that has now dragged on for eight years.

Eight more US soldiers died in bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, making October the deadliest month for US forces in the eight-year conflict.

Speculation is rife in Washington over whether Obama will reveal his hand before heading off on an eight-day trip to Asia on November 11.

Last week, Obama said that he may make up his mind before the Afghan re-run election on November 7, but may not announce his decision.

The US capital was also buzzing after the resignation of a diplomat who publicly criticized the Afghan war.

Matthew Hoh, 36, was the senior State Department official in Afghanistan's Zabul province -- a hotbed of Taliban militancy -- until last month when he became the first US official known to have resigned in protest at the conflict.

In a letter to his bosses, Hoh described the United States as "a supporting actor" in Afghanistan's decades-old civil war, adding that he had "lost understanding of and confidence in" the US mission.

Gibbs said Obama had read the Washington Post's report on Hoh's resignation but had not seen the letter himself.

Senator John Kerry, meanwhile, who last week helped convince Afghan President Hamid Karzai to embrace the run-off vote after a fraud-tainted first round, further stirred the pot on Obama's decision.

A week after saying it would be "common sense" for Obama to put his decision on hold until after the Afghan election, Kerry said he would be "surprised" if Obama did not announce his decision before leaving for Asia.

On Monday, Kerry declared that McChrystal's plan goes "too far, too fast."

Obama, after being accused of "dithering" by former vice president Dick Cheney, told a military audience in Florida that he would never "rush" the decision to ask Americans to risk their lives in a war half a world away.

The latest attacks on US troops in Afghanistan, claimed by the Taliban, ocurred a day after 14 US soldiers and narcotics agents died in helicopter crashes.

They brought the number of Americans killed to at least 53 for the month, compared with 51 killed in August, the next deadliest month for the US.

UN chief urges compromise ahead of climate summit

WASHINGTON — UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged member nations Monday to reach a compromise ahead of a climate change summit scheduled for December in Copenhagen and called on the United States to stay engaged.

"All agree that climate change is an existential threat to humankind," Ban wrote in an op-ed article published by The New York Times. "Yet agreement on what to do still eludes us."

Ban said he was encouraged by the spirit of compromise shown in the bipartisan initiative announced last week by US Senators John Kerry and Lindsey Graham.

Earlier this year, the US House of Representative passed sweeping legislation designed to control greenhouse gas effect, but the US Senate has not acted yet.

The Kerry-Graham compromise is designed to secure progress on the issue.

Ban said the world cannot afford another period where the United States stands on the sidelines of the climate change debate.

"An engaged United States can lead the world to seal a deal to combat climate change in Copenhagen," the UN secretary general pointed out.

"An indecisive or insufficiently engaged United States will cause unnecessary -- and ultimately unaffordable -- delay in concrete strategies and policies to beat this looming challenge."

Erratic typhoon keeps Philippines on edge

MANILA, Philippines — Living up to its name, Typhoon Lupit — meaning cruel in Filipino — zigzagged around the rain-soaked northern Philippines on Friday, keeping weary residents on edge and forecasters guessing about its next move.

The third successive storm in a month has been hovering for several days near the coast and inland mountains, sending thousands to seek shelter following two back-to-back typhoons that killed nearly 1,000 people, most of them buried in dozens of mudslides.

Lupit's erratic direction baffled forecasters and frustrated the local media who kept predicting its landfall every day. The weather bureau said in a nationally televised briefing Thursday evening that Lupit would ram into northeastern Cagayan province early Friday.

After crawling for the last two days, it barreled on course to hit shore then stalled again Friday, delaying landfall by another day — or two, or three, said chief forecaster Nathaniel Cruz.

The reason is two high-pressure areas that sandwiched Lupit from the South China Sea in the west and the Pacific Ocean in the east, each pulling the storm in its direction, Cruz said.

Typhoons usually slice through the northern Philippines from the Pacific and exit through the South China Sea. The archipelago nation, known as the welcome mat for typhoons, gets about 20 a year during the rainy season from June to December.

Lupit weakened overnight and was packing winds of 75 miles (120 kilometers) per hour and gusts of up to 93 mph (150 kph), Cruz said. It was still a dangerous system that could drench the north of the main island of Luzon on the heels of the worst flooding in the Philippines in 40 years.

Tropical Storm Ketsana on Sept. 26 inundated much of the capital, Manila, and surrounding areas, including the country's largest Lake Laguna, killing 464 people. It was followed by Typhoon Parma, which unleashed mudslides along the Cordillera mountain range Oct. 3, leaving 465 dead.

For the past week, army troops and disaster-relief officials have ferried tons of canned food and clothes and moved rubber boats and helicopters along the coast and the interior.

At least 1,500 residents living along the Cagayan River and its tributaries were moved to high ground, said provincial Gov. Alvaro Antonio. Another 1,000 people left their homes in Appari township, including some 200 after a wave surge collapsed a 65-feet (20-meter) high sea wall in San Antonio village early this week.

Pakistani university blasts kill 4, wound 18

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Suicide bombers attacked an Islamic university popular with foreigners in Pakistan's capital Tuesday, killing four students in apparent retaliation for an escalating army offensive on a Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold near the Afghan border.

An Associated Press reporter close to the battle zone in South Waziristan met a group of Taliban fighters who challenged army claims of progress in the four-day assault, saying they had pushed soldiers back from the strategic town of Kotkai.

Intelligence officials also said the army had been repelled from the town after being close to taking it. They asked that their names not be used for operational reasons.

The suicide bombers hit a faculty building and a women's cafeteria at the International Islamic University, where nearly half the students are women and hundreds are foreigners.

The blasts, which left bits of flesh and body parts strewn on the floor, killed two male and two female students and wounded at least 18 others. The two attackers were also killed, officials said.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack on what some people thought was a surprising target for Islamist extremists, but the president of the university and authorities said they believed it was the work of militants in the northwest.

Authorities have been warning that militants would try to bring the war to Pakistan's cities since the army began its offensive. Many schools and universities were closed after receiving word from authorities on Monday they could be targeted.

After the attack, the government ordered all educational institutions closed for a week in three of the country's four provinces.

The university is attended by 18,000 students. It has close to 2,000 international students, many from China. While it is a seat of Islamic learning, most students take secular courses such as management science or computer studies.

"Those who call themselves champions of Islam, they have today proved by attacking the Islamic university that they are neither friends of Islam nor Pakistan" said Interior Minister Rehman Malik, whose motorcade was stoned by angry students as he left the campus on the outskirts of Islamabad.

Many students did not accept that militants were responsible for attacking a hub of Islamic learning and instead blamed shadowy forces out to discredit Islam or weaken Pakistan — variations of conspiracy theories that are often heard here after bombings.

"It shows clearly that anti-Islamic elements are involved in these attacks," said economics student Abul Hassan.

Militants from South Waziristan have claimed responsibility for a string of recent terrorist attacks, including a 22-hour siege on the army headquarters close to the capital and a suicide attack on a U.N. office in Islamabad that killed five people.

The army has deployed some 30,000 troops to South Waziristan against about 12,000 Taliban militants, including up to 1,500 foreign fighters, among them Uzbeks and Arabs. The region is also considered a major al-Qaida operations and training base.

In a brief statement, the military said troops backed by aerial bombing were advancing on three fronts, but were meeting stiff resistance from militants on high ground firing rockets and small arms. It reported four more soldiers were killed, bringing the army's death toll to 13, while 12 militants were slain, bringing their death toll to 90.

An AP reporter came across three Taliban fighters traveling in a car with darkened windows at Shaktoi, a town close the border between South and North Waziristan, which is also home to thousands of Islamist militants. They were carrying assault rifles, grenades and radios.

One of the men, who gave his name as Askari, said they had come from South Waziristan, where they and other fighters had pushed the army back from Kotkai, the birthplace of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud and a major strategic prize.

"We are inflicting heavy losses on them," he said.

It is nearly impossible to independently verify information coming from South Waziristan because the army has closed off all roads to the region. Analysts say both sides have exaggerated successes and downplayed loses in the past.

Askari mocked an appeal by the army chief for villagers to support the offensive.

"The people of this area knew very well whether we are terrorists or fighters for Islam," he said.

Elsewhere, around 600 villagers who earlier fled the fighting chanted "Long live the Taliban" and "Down with America" after complaining of receiving no government aid for days. The protest took place in Kot Azam in North West Frontier Province, which lies close to the border region.

"I have not received a single penny or a handful of grain," said Akhtar Mehsud, who left his home two months ago and is now living in the ruins of an old house along with 22 members of his family. "I have now no hope from this government. The Taliban were even better than them."

The United Nations said at least 32,000 people have fled South Waziristan over the last week, joining more than 80,000 people who left earlier when the army began making preparations for the offensive. Authorities say more will leave in coming weeks, but don't expect to have to house them in camps because most have relatives in the region.

Associated Press reporters Rasool Dawar in Shatkoi, Ishtiaq Mahsud in Kot Azam and Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.