ISLAMABAD - Pakistani soldiers closed in on two major Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan yesterday, officials said, as government jets pounded insurgent hide-outs and the prime minister said the country had no choice but to defeat the militants.

“We are at war,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told a press conference in the city of Peshawar, where a militant car bombing a few days ago killed more than 115 people. “Our civil leadership, our military leadership and political leadership . . . we are on the same page that we have to fight the militancy.