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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistani troops are searching house-to-house in a cordoned off section of the country's tribal areas in an effort to find suspected al Qaeda fighters, a Pakistan security official said.
The search follows the discovery of a series of tunnels that could have been used by militants to escape capture.
Brig. Mehmood Shah, the Secretary of Security for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, said 123 suspects have so far been detained.
The military believes the fighters have taken 12 Pakistani paramilitary troops captive along with two civil authority officials.
Pakistani forces have cordoned off a 50-square-km (19-square-mile) area where the fighters have been holed up since last week.
An exit to one of the tunnels, which could have been used used early on to allow the fighters to escape, has now been surrounded by Pakistani troops.
Brig. Shah said a cease-fire called to allow tribal leaders time to negotiate with the fighters has ended.
Tribal leaders met early Sunday with Pakistani military officials and persuaded the army to reduce its air assault on the region to intermittent fire, military sources said.
In return, the tribal leaders agreed to enter the area and try to persuade the Ahmed Zai tribe to hand over captives and any militants they may be protecting, the sources said.
The battle began a week ago as part of an anti-terrorism campaign by Pakistani troops in the border region. Members of the country's paramilitary Frontier Constabulary ran into trouble during a routine search, which led to the deaths of 15 members of the unit.
Hopes for a quick capture of a "high-value" al Qaeda operative appeared to fade Monday with the discovery of the network of tunnels.
The longest of the tunnels, said to be about one mile (about 1.6 km) long, runs from the houses of two tribesmen to a point near the border with Afghanistan.
Asked if the "high value target" the Pakistani military believes is in the area could have escaped through the tunnel, a government spokesman said, "It's possible."
Pakistani officials, expressing surprise at the initial ferocity of the resistance encountered near Wana and Shkin Warsak in southern Waziristan, suggested the fighters there could be protecting al Qaeda's No. 2 man, Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri.
U.S. officials have long said they believe Zawahiri and al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden are hiding in the remote mountain region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But the Americans quickly said they had no information that Zawahiri was present last week, and the Pakistanis later followed suit.
On Monday, 12 Pakistani troops were killed in a rocket attack on a military convoy that was sent to resupply troops involved in the confrontation with suspected al Qaeda fighters, military officials said. Three other soldiers were killed in an attack later in the day.
The convoy was heading into the country's tribal areas when it was ambushed, military sources told CNN.
The attack took place some distance from the standoff in the mountainous region along Pakistan's northwest border.
-- CNN Bureau Chief Ash-har Quraishi, Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson and Producer Syed Mohsin Naqvi contributed to this report.
