PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 9, (Agencies): Militants killed 10 Pakistani paramilitary soldiers they had been holding hostage since last month, the second time the insurgents have killed security force captives close to the Afghan border in a week, a government official said Monday.
The incident shows the brutality of the insurgency in the northwest at a time when the Pakistani government is claimed by some insurgent commanders to be entering into peace talks. The government and the army have denied any negotiations are under way.
The bodies of the Frontier Corp soldiers were found in the Orakzai region near the border, said Naeem Khan, an official in Kohat town. Militants were not immediately available for comment.
Khan said the 10 were seized Dec 24 in a militant raid on a security base in Orakzai.
Last week, insurgents from the Pakistani Taleban killed 15 members of the Frontier Constabulary, a police paramilitary unit. They put out a statement saying this was in revenge for an army operation that had killed a top commander from the Pakistani Taleban.
The Taleban have been fighting an insurgency in Pakistan since 2007 that has killed thousands of soldiers, police and Pakistani civilians. The militants are tied to al-Qaeda, which also has leaders in the northwest and insurgents fighting across the border in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani army has launched operations against the Pakistani Taleban in the northwest, but the militants have proven resilient.
The bodies of 10 Pakistani soldiers and 10 Taleban fighters killed in a clash in a tribal agency in Pakistan’s largely lawless northwest last month have been exchanged, sources in the Pakistani military and the Taleban said on Monday.
The clash was the latest flare-up in Orakzai, one of seven tribal areas near Pakistan’s porous western border with Afghanistan.
“The Taleban killed them (the 10 troops) and had taken away their bodies. We killed some of their people and were in possession of their bodies,” a senior military official, requesting anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to speak to the media, told Reuters.
“Now, through negotiation, we have exchanged bodies.”
The attack occurred on Dec 21 at the Maqsood checkpost in Orakzai, said the official, killing 10 on each side.
Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taleban, gave a similar account.
“We take responsibility for killing the 10 soldiers whose bodies have been recovered from Orakzai”, Ehsanullah told Reuters from an undisclosed location.
“This is an exchange of bodies with them, as they killed 10 of our people and we have responded with killing 10 of their men,” he said.
Five of the Taleban bodies were given back last week in the Khyber agency and five were handed over on Monday in Orakzai.
The grisly exchange comes just days after the bodies of 15 Pakistani soldiers, captured on Dec 23 after dozens of Taleban militants stormed a paramilitary fort in the northwestern Tank district, were discovered.
Their bodies, with gunshot wounds and signs of torture, had been found in the Thal area of the northwestern Hangu district on Jan 5.
Pakistani forces have targeted militants in the northwestern tribal regions on and off for more than four years. The latest offensive started in Orakzai in October.
Formed in 2007, the TTP is an umbrella group of various Pakistani militant factions operating in the tribal areas.
Allied with the Afghan Taleban and al-Qaeda, it pledged to overthrow the Pakistani government after the military started operations against militant groups.
It is blamed for many of the suicide bombings across the country and has carried out audacious attacks, including one on the Pakistan army headquarters near the capital, Islamabad, in 2009. The United States has labeled the TTP a terrorist group.