World Bulletin / News Desk

At least 18 people have been killed and 15 injured in fierce clashes between two rival tribes in Pakistan's lawless North Waziristan in the last three days, security officials and locals said on Saturday.

Clashes erupted on Thursday on a lingering land dispute between rival tribes in the Lawara Mandi area of the troubled region.

Both sides have been using rockets, mortars and heavy weapons against each other, a senior security official told Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity.

A tribal assembly is trying to broker a ceasefire between the warring tribes despite no progress reported so far, the official said.

Ihsan Khan, a local journalist told AA that the two powerful tribes of the region, Maddakhel and Kabulkhel, had been at loggerheads on the ownership of some mineral-rich mountains on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border for many years.

Bordering with war-stricken Afghanistan, North Waziristan is one of the seven semi autonomous tribal areas, and has been beset by violence for the last decade.

The U.S. administration dubs the region as a heartland of militancy and a bastion of powerful Haqqani network, a group blamed for brazen attacks on foreign forces in Afghanistan.