Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistani forces have killed 422 Taliban militants and arrested 15 since the start of an operation to defeat the group in South Waziristan, on the border with Afghanistan, the army said.

Forty-two soldiers have died and 123 have been injured since the offensive began on Oct. 17, army spokesman Athar Abbas said by telephone from Rawalpindi today.

The Pakistani military effort is the country’s biggest against the Taliban and has prompted retaliatory attacks that have left more than 300 people dead.

Pakistan needs international support to maintain its fight to defeat the Taliban and ensure the country’s progress, President Asif Ali Zardari said. It faces the challenges of providing security and development and needs the “active engagement” of the international community to meet these objectives, he told the French Ambassador Daniel Jouanneau in Islamabad yesterday, the official Associated Press of Pakistan said.

“Economic development is directly proportional to the peace and stability of the region,” Zardari said, according to presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar.

Pakistan will work closely with France and other international partners to fight terrorism, Zardari said, according to APP.

Militants are in “retreat” in South Waziristan, the president said earlier at a meeting with Jean-Maurice Ripert, the United Nations secretary-general for humanitarian assistance to Pakistan.

The government says the army has cut off escape routes to prevent large numbers of Taliban fighters from fleeing the region as it tries to complete the offensive before the start of winter next month.

Latest Fighting

The army said today that 28 militants were killed in South Waziristan in the previous 24 hours and five were arrested. Five soldiers also died and two were injured, the military said in a statement on its Web site. Troops are consolidating their positions around the peaks in the Jandola-Sararogha area, it said.

Nine militants surrendered to troops in Swat Valley and five relatives of local terrorist commander Ali Rehman were arrested, the army said.

Soldiers fought street battles in the town of Ladha, the military said yesterday. Most of Sararogha, in one of the battle zone’s three main valleys, has been cleared, it said in a statement.

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.

‘Long War’

The Taliban said two days ago their forces are falling back deliberately before advancing fighters to engage in what spokesman Azam Tariq called a “long war,” the Associated Press reported at the time. Areas that “the army is claiming to have won are being vacated by us” to draw the army into a trap deep inside South Waziristan, he said.

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.

Capturing Taliban-controlled towns may have limited strategic value unless soldiers pursue militants into their mountain hideouts, ex-army Brigadier Javed Hussain said in a telephone interview from Islamabad yesterday.

With winter snows weeks away, the offensive has stuck to three highways, he said.

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.

To contact the reporters on this story: Anwar Shakir in Karachi at ashakir1@bloomberg.net; Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 5, 2009 07:03 EST