PESHAWAR, Oct 24: Bodies of the eight Pakistanis killed in the US bombing on Kabul were brought over to Pakistan on Wednesday through Mohmand tribal area bordering Afghanistan after the authorities refused to let them through at Torkham border checkpoint.

“The bodies attracted quite a bit of attention,” an official source said. The eight Pakistanis were among the thirty-six other compatriots reportedly killed in a US bombing raid on Darul Aman in the Afghan capital.

An official posted at Torkham said the bodies were brought to the checkpoint at 7.15 am in pick-up trucks covered in coffins, accompanied by an activist of the Harakatul Mujahideen. “The Taliban border guards approached us with a request to allow the bodies to enter Pakistan,” the official said.

He said that they had permission to allow wounded people into Pakistan from Afghanistan but there was no directive to allow bodies.

Apparently upset at being denied entry, the Harakatul Mujahideen activists took the bodies back at around 8.25 am, saying they would bury them in Jalalabad, the official said.

Later, however, it transpired that the bodies were brought over to Pakistan through an unfrequented route via Khwizai in Mohmand Agency. One of the dead, who belonged to Charsadda district, was later laid to rest in his native village, officials and eyewitnesses said.

The eight Pakistanis whose bodies were brought back here have been identified as Sahibzada Muhammad Ishaq (Charsadda), Ustad Farooq (Karachi), Muhammad Haris (Rawlakot), Talha (Gujranwala), Ustad Yasir (Punjab), Javed (Dera Ismail Khan), Muhammad Arshad (Rawlakot) and Abullah (Mohmand Agency).

Several Pakistanis had been killed when the US hit training camps in southern Khost province in 1998 following the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The US designated the HUM a terrorist organisation and believed that it had close links with Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden.