Seven suspected Taliban militants were also arrested in the operation in the northwestern town of Jamrud, the gateway to the famed Khyber Pass linking Pakistan and Afghanistan, the senior security official told AFP.

"The van was packed from floor to ceiling with explosives weighing around 1,000 kilogrammes," or 2,200 pounds, the official said, adding that detonators were attached to the explosives.

"The van could have been used during Muharram and caused many deaths if this huge amount of explosives had been detonated," he said, referring to the Muslim mourning period currently being observed in Pakistan.

Security forces launched the operation in the rugged Khyber tribal area near Jamrud last week, following a series of attacks on truck depots in and around the city of Peshawar that saw hundreds of NATO vehicles and containers torched.

The anti-militant offensive forced the closure of the highway from Peshawar to the border town of Torkham, blocking NATO supply trucks from reaching Afghanistan.

But the road has been open for a few hours a day since Friday during daylight breaks in the curfew that has been imposed on Jamrud until the military operation is complete.

The security official said the seven men arrested were members of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the country's umbrella Taliban group led by militant warlord Baitullah Mehsud.

Mehsud was accused by the previous Pakistani government and US officials of plotting the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a gun and suicide attack in Rawalpindi in December 2007.

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