Our Newest Negotiating Partners: Taliban Execute 15 Pakistani Soldiers
Taliban insurgents executed 15 security soldiers who had been recently kidnapped and dumped their bodies on a hilltop in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, in retaliation for the killing of a militant commander by government forces, government and military officials said.
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The soldiers were kidnapped Dec. 23 after dozens of Taliban insurgents overran a fort in one of the restive tribal regions straddling the border with Afghanistan. Officials said they had tried but failed to secure the captives’ release.
The executions followed the death of a high-ranking Taliban commander on Sunday and came just days after local news media reported that several factions of the Taliban had vowed not to attack the Pakistani military.
The bullet-ridden bodies of the soldiers, members of the Frontier Constabulary, were spotted by local tribesmen on Thursday morning after they were dumped in Mir Ali, a subdistrict in the North Waziristan tribal region. The Frontier Constabulary, run by the Pakistani police authorities, has about 70,000 paramilitary soldiers who operate checkpoints in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province and provide security at foreign embassies and consulates in major cities across Pakistan.
“From the look of it, it seems they had been shot dead early Thursday morning,” said a senior security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We have been trying to get them freed,” the official said, “and we have had contact with their captors. And until last night the indications that we had were very, very positive. God knows what happened afterwards.”
Farther south, armed men in the city of Quetta kidnapped a British doctor who worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross on Thursday, said Sitara Jabeen, a spokeswoman for the aid group. She said she knew of no motive for the abduction, which took place near his home.
The executions in northwestern Pakistan were claimed by a Taliban spokesman, Ihsanullah Ihsan, who described them as an “act of revenge” for the killing of militants in the Khyber tribal region on Sunday. He said the group would release a video of the killings “soon” and threatened more attacks.