Scores of Pakistani soldiers missing near border

ISLAMABAD, Aug 30 (Reuters) Security officials today said they feared scores of Pakistani paramilitary soldiers had been kidnapped by pro-Taliban insurgents after they went missing in a region near the Afghan border.

The men disappeared while travelling in trucks to the town of Ladha, 40 km north of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, a semi-autonomous tribal region.

''They're missing. We've had no contact with them since 2 pm (local time),'' a military official who declined to be named, said.

Intelligence officials in South Waziristan said more than 100 men appeared to have been abducted by militants and taken to a number of different hideouts.

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 the lawless tribal belt on the 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.

Militants in South Waziristan released 18 paramilitary solders and one civilian official this week after holding most of them for nearly three weeks.

But they killed one of the soldiers, videotaping a teenaged boy cutting the man's head off.

Reuters MS GC2248