Pakistan’s army has deployed more troops to a stretch of the Afghan border to stop Taliban militants fleeing a major U.S. offensive in southern Afghanistan, a spokesman said Thursday.

Nearly 4,000 U.S. Marines plus 650 Afghan forces moved into Afghanistan’s Helmand province early Thursday to take on the Taliban in one of their strongholds.

Pakistani and US officials have expressed concern the American troop buildup in southern Afghanistan could push the militants across the poorly guarded and mountainous border into Pakistan.

“We’ve mustered more troops from the other areas of the border” to deploy opposite the Helmand region, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said.

“We expected that the effect of this operation would be that the pressure would come on the border. We are rearranging where the pressure is less on the border of crossing. It is sort of a reorganization and redeployment of the forces.” Abbas declined to give specifics, such as how many troops were being sent to bolster those already along that stretch of the border or exactly how much of the move was coordinated with the United States.

But he added: “It started months ago. (The U.S.) had indicated that they will be coming to Helmand and the eastern part of Afghanistan. The threat was visualized. The possibility of crossing was visualized. We have addressed it by beefing up the border posts.”

Pakistan shares a 1,600-mile (2,600-kilometer) border with Afghanistan. The section opposite Helmand is around 160 miles (260 kilometers) long and lies in Baluchistan province, where U.S. officials believe the Afghan Taliban’s top leadership are hiding out.

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