Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Taliban fighters are fleeing into the mountains of South Waziristan to escape a military offensive and resistance is dwindling, Pakistan’s army said.

Terrorist supply lines have been cut and their ability to “strike as a cohesive force” reduced significantly, Major General Athar Abbas, the military spokesman, told local television yesterday, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

While most escape routes have been closed, guerrillas are fleeing across rugged terrain in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan, Abbas said. Intelligence reports indicate militant leaders remain in Waziristan and are in hiding, he added.

Soldiers are trying to take control of the South Waziristan homeland of the Mehsuds, an ethnic Pashtun tribe that supplies the core of the largest Taliban force of about 10,000 fighters. The offensive has prompted retaliatory suicide bomb and gun attacks that have left more than 300 people dead in Pakistan.

The Taliban say their forces are falling back deliberately before advancing troops to fight what spokesman Azam Tariq called a “long war,” the Associated Press reported this week.

The military says troops have cleared insurgents from most of Sararogha, a town in one of the battle zone’s three main valleys. Government forces are consolidating their positions around the peaks in the Jandola-Sararogha area, the military said yesterday.

Limited Value

The capture of Taliban-controlled towns in the region may have limited strategic value unless soldiers pursue militants into their mountainous hideouts, ex-army brigadier Javed Hussain, a former Special Forces commander, said this week.

While the army has said it dropped groups of soldiers onto strategic mountain ridges to protect its advance, the units are too small to enter the forested valleys and ravines where the Taliban will regroup, Hussain said.

The army began the operation, its largest against Islamic militants, on Oct. 17, and said it has killed about 422 guerrillas. Forty-two soldiers have died and 123 have been injured, the military said yesterday.

Accounts of the fighting are difficult to confirm because Pakistan bars foreigners from the tribal areas and local journalists have been forced out by the government and the Taliban.

To contact the reporters on this story: Anwar Shakir in Karachi at ashakir1@bloomberg.net; Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 5, 2009 18:48 EST