KHAR:
Security officials on Friday said that 15 troops were missing following fighting with militants, as a Taliban video emerged showing what appeared to be the severed heads of a dozen soldiers.
The clashes on Tuesday came as part of an army operation to repel insurgents who had crossed over from the eastern Afghan province of Kunar last Friday and occupied the Batwar area, in the Salarzai sub-division of Bajaur tribal agency.
“At least 15 of our soldiers are still missing,” a senior security official told AFP.
Another security official said “more or less” that number of soldiers were missing but declined to give the exact total.
The infamous Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the group responsible for most violence in the country, released a grisly video showing, according to the group, the severed heads of Pakistani soldiers.
The video sent by TTP spokesperson Sirajuddin to AFP shows a TTP commander posing with 12 heads arranged on the ground which he claimed were from soldiers they had killed.
“Many of them were killed by bullets, 12 of them as you see have been beheaded, you see 12 heads here, and more heads are on the way,” he says.
The commander is flanked in the footage by armed men including one wielding a huge axe.
The video also showed the identity cards of the dead men, but military sources have so far not said whether they are the missing soldiers or confirmed that those shown in the video are Pakistani troops.
Fighting in Bajaur in the past week has claimed at least 50 lives, including 31 militants and two volunteers of the Salarzai peace militia who were killed on Monday.
Meanwhile, in Orakzai tribal region, at least seven militants, among them a local TTP commander, were killed in fresh fighting.
“Acting on intelligence, security forces pounded trenches of militants in the Wach Pal area of Lower Orakzai, with heavy artillery, killing seven insurgents,” a security official told The Express Tribune.
A militant commander for the Orakzai chapter of TTP, identified as Maulana Ishaq alias Gud Mulla, was among the fatalities, he added.
Wach Pal, a remote area of Orakzai bordering Khyber Agency, is frequently used by militants as a transit route for mounting hit-and-run attacks on security forces.
In other violence, suspected militants gunned down a tribal elder outside a mosque in the Feroz Khel Mela area of Lower Orakzai.
The tribal elder – Malik Zareen Gul – was returning home after offering Friday noon prayers when militants lurking in the Feroz Khel bazaar shot him dead. (AFP with additional reporting by our correspondent in Hangu)
Published in The Express Tribune, September 1st, 2012.
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where is the video? can any provide the link
Is it still not your war ???