Pakistani troops drove off a Taliban attack on a fort and pounded another band of militants holed up in a health center, officials said Wednesday as fighting spread to a third area of the tribal belt along the Afghan border.

As many as 49 insurgents were reported killed. Police also say a bomb hit a prison van in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least eight people.

The violence came a week after the threat of impeachment forced longtime U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf to resign as president, triggering a scramble for power that resulted in the collapse of Pakistan’s governing coalition.

The party led by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto until her assassination last December is now in a position to dominate the government, and it is toughening its stance against Islamic extremists.

The Taliban have claimed responsibility for a wave of suicide bombings, including one outside the country’s biggest weapons complex last week that killed at least 67 people, almost all of them civilians.