Pakistani militants kill two suspected informers

PESHAWAR, Apr 19 (Reuters) Pro-Taliban militants beheaded a Pakistani tribesman and shot dead an Afghan cab driver said to have been acting as US informers in Pakistan's restive Waziristan tribal region, officials said today.

The overnight slayings came two days after a tribesman's headless body was found in North Waziristan with a note attached saying the victim was an American spy and warning others they would face the same fate.

The headless corpse found today by the roadside near Mir Ali, a town in North Waziristan, had a similar note attached.

In neighbouring South Waziristan, intelligence officials said the bullet-riddled body of an Afghan taxi driver had been found two days after he was kidnapped.

''We believe he was killed on suspicions that he was spying for the Americans,'' an intelligence official in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan, said.

Many al Qaeda militants and their Taliban allies fled to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt after they were chased out of Afghanistan by US-backed forces in late 2001. The fiercely independent, and deeply religious tribals in the area have sympathised with the Taliban and al Qaeda's Islamist causes.

REUTERS KD KN2124