Pakistani tribal leaders in the remote region that borders Afghanistan were preparing yesterday to order a house-to-house search of their mountainous lands in a last-ditch effort to round up members of al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathisers, senior government officials said. The deadline for tribesmen to surrender fugitive militants came as the US announced a sweeping military operation, Mountain Storm, which began on March 7 in south and east Afghanistan. It was not immediately clear if there was a link between the operations, and US military officials stopped short of calling Mountain Storm the start of a much-forecast spring offensive. General David Barno, the head of US military operations in Afghanistan, recently described a “hammer and anvil” strategy of applying pressure on both sides of the border to squeeze out militants. Full Story