FACTBOX - Is Pakistan's Taliban war about to get bigger?

By Robert Birsel

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Militants ambushed a Pakistani military convoy in North Waziristan on the Afghan border this week killing 16 soldiers and threatening to open a new front for the army in its campaign against the Taliban.

The militants were from a faction led by a commander, Gul Bahadur, who agreed to a peace pact with the government last year. A faction spokesman said his men would now go on the offensive against the army.

There are numerous militant factions in Pakistan's northwest with differing objectives, some intent on forcing foreign troops out of Afghanistan, others fighting Pakistan.

WHICH GROUPS IS PAKISTAN FIGHTING?

The military launched a drive two months ago in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad but not on the Afghan border, against a Taliban faction led by a commander known as Fazlullah.

The government has also ordered an offensive against Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan, on the Afghan border. Both factions have been fighting Pakistani security forces and carrying out bomb attacks. Last year, the army went on the attack against close Mehsud ally, Faqir Mohammad, in the Bajaur region at the northeastern end of the ethnic Pashtun tribal belt on the Afghan border.

The area had become an al Qaeda hub and Mohammad's men had also attacked Pakistani security forces. Some al Qaeda-linked factions of groups nurtured in the 1990s to battle Indian forces in the disputed Kashmir region have also "gone rogue" and are attacking the Pakistani state.