Negotiators seek release of scores of Pakistani troops (Roundup)

Aug 31, 2007, 14:04 GMT

Islamabad - Pakistani authorities and tribal leaders were Friday trying to secure the release of up to 150 paramilitary troops captured by pro-Taliban insurgents in the border area by Afghanistan, an official said.

A 21-member delegation of elders, clerics and local administration representatives travelled to the town of Wana in South Waziristan for talks, a senior security officer said on condition of anonymity.

The Frontier Corps unit of around 150 men was travelling between Wana and Shakai in 16 vehicles on Thursday when 'hundreds' of heavily armed militants blocked and surrounded the convoy, he said.

The group was being held in mountains in the Ladha area, he added amid confused reports about the exact number of soldiers being held. Unnamed security officials and the militants themselves put the number between 100 and 300 men.

A spokesman for a local rebel leader Baitullah Mehsud told the BBC that 300 soldiers were surrounded, disarmed and taken prisoner because the government was not honouring a peace deal.

However, the central army command in Islamabad's twin city of Rawalpindi rejected reports of the captures. Contact was lost with the group while it was sheltering in a valley from a storm and the convoy would shortly return to base, a spokesman said.

In an indication that a prisoner exchange was to be expected, An elder from the Mehsud tribe told the BBC that security forces detained 50 local residents after the convoy was hijacked.

The area has seen a growing number of attacks on security forces since the government troops in July stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad. At least 60 soldiers and 250 militants have been killed in clashes and bomb attacks in recent weeks.

Tribal elders facilitated the release by militants on Tuesday of 18 soldiers who were captured earlier this month in the border region, which the United States claims is a refuge for al-Qaeda and Taliban forces.

Meanwhile, violence continued Friday throughout Pakistan's north-west border areas.

Two soldiers were killed and six were injured in the Swat district in the restive North-West Frontier Province as dozens of pro-Taliban militants attacked a military checkpoint with rockets and mortars, news reports said.

One civilian and a policeman died and another policemen was injured in a roadside bomb attack on reinforcements approaching the checkpoint, local police chief Iqbal Khan said.

The militants withdrew after an hour of bombardment, leaving the checkpoint ablaze, he said. They later fired on an ambulance that was evacuating casualties but caused no further injury, he added.

In a separate incident in the tribal region of North Waziristan, a suicide bomber killed himself and a truck driver whose vehicle was parked near a security forces checkpoint, the Aaj news channel reported.