Militants free 15 Pakistani soldiers

Wana (Pakistan), Aug 28: Pro-Taliban militants in northwest Pakistan released 15 paramilitary troops today after nearly three weeks in captivity, a tribal elder said.

''They have handed over the 15 soldiers,'' the elder Ameer Mohammad Mehsud told sources. Mehsud was involved in negotiations to free the men.

The militants abducted 16 paramilitary soldiers in the South Waziristan region near the Afghan border on Aug. 9. They later killed one of the soldiers, videotaping a teenaged boy cutting the man's head off.

Mehsud said another four people, including a paramilitary officer and a government official, abducted in the same region last week would be released soon.

Pakistan's rugged Waziristan region is a hotbed of militant support. It has never been brought under the writ of any government.

Many al Qaeda and Taliban members took refuge in Waziristan and other remote regions on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border after US and Afghan opposition forces toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Violence in Pakistan, mainly in Waziristan and other parts of its lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border, has escalated since the collapse of a peace deal with militants and an army crackdown on a pro-Taliban mosque in the capital last month.

Despite Pakistani efforts to clear out foreign militants and subdue their Pakistani allies, US security officials say Waziristan and other border areas are sanctuaries for al Qaeda and the Taliban where they regroup and plot violence.

REUTERS>