Captors seek troops pullout from tribal area

PESHAWAR—Pro-Taliban militants said Sunday they had abducted scores of soldiers, demanding the withdrawal of troops from tribal areas near the Afghan border in exchange for their release. Military authorities have insisted that some 150 soldiers were stranded after straying into Ladha region in restive South Waziristan district in stormy weather on Thursday, amid tensions between militants and local tribesmen.
“Our colleagues have captured them and put them in jails,” Zulfiqar Mehsud, a spokesman for the militants, told by telephone from an undisclosed location. Mehsud said the fighters had “surrounded the soldiers and forced them to surrender” their weapons. “We took them into custody because the soldiers were preparing to launch an operation in South Waziristan,” he said, claiming responsibility for the kidnapping Saturday of 10 additional soldiers from the army’s Frontier Corps.
He said negotiations for their release could start once the government agreed to “honour” a peace accord it concluded with tribal militants in February 2005, under which Islamabad agreed to withdraw troops from the area. Pakistan’s Western allies have criticised the deal for giving the Taliban and Al-Qaeda space to regroup and mount attacks in Afghanistan.
Chief military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad reiterated that the soldiers had not been kidnapped, but were “trapped” amid a dispute between the militants and local tribesmen. “We have not received any demand from them,” the general told. He said members of a jirga, or tribal peace committee, were holding talks with local tribesmen to secure safe passage for the soldiers.The soldiers were travelling to neighbouring North Waziristan when they lost contact with army headquarters.
Arshad on Friday dismissed reports the troops were kidnapped by armed militants. He said a group of militants wanted to take the soldiers hostage but tribal people had opposed the fighters. The border area is a known hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants engaged in a bloody confrontation with tens of thousands of troops deployed in the region to hunt them down since 2002. The incident in South Waziristan comes after militants released 19 soldiers who were abducted early last month. One soldier was beheaded on video by a teenage boy on August 14.
Pakistan has been hit by a wave of Islamist bloodshed since the siege of the extremist Red Mosque in the capital in July in which more than 100 people died, most of them militants. A powerful bomb, apparently targeting pro-government tribesmen ripped through a shopping centre in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, on Sunday, killing one person and wounding eight.
“It was a powerful blast — a man was killed and eight others were injured,” a security official said, adding that several shops were damaged in the explosion. Residents said the blast took place near the office of pro-government tribesmen who had expelled ethnic Uzbek militants after bloody clashes in the mountainous region in March this year. —Agencies