Pakistani Helicopter Under Fire, General Wounded

A top Pakistani military commander was shot in the thigh Wednesday when his helicopter came under fire near the Swat valley where troops fought off a Taliban insurgency two years ago.

Major General Javed Iqbal, one of Pakistan's top commanders in the northwest, was airborne when gunfire from the ground hit his helicopter in the mountainous village of Nusrat Darra in the district of Upper Dir.

Security officials had initially said the helicopter was hit in Swat.

Upper Dir is part of Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and borders Swat, where the military waged a major offensive to put down a local Taliban insurgency in 2009.

Officials said the general was taking an aerial view of troop deployment.

"The helicopter is safe. The commander was slightly injured. There was no loss of life," a senior security official told Agence France Presse.

Another senior security official in Swat said two bullets hit the helicopter but that it landed safely.

A third security official told AFP that a bullet hit the general's right thigh and that was taken to a military hospital in Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad.

There was no claim of responsibility for Wednesday's incident.

In 2009, 30,000 Pakistani troops went into battle against Taliban fighters who for two years had terrorized people with a campaign of beheadings, violence and attacks on girls' schools in Swat and neighboring districts.

The army declared the region back under control in July of that year and said the rebels had all been killed, captured or had fled.