PESHAWAR, March 26: Suspected militants in the South Waziristan tribal region have shot dead eight soldiers held hostage since an ambush last week on an army supply convoy in Serwakai
, 35km to the east of Wana, the regional headquarters.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) confirmed the death of eight soldiers but declined to say what action the government intended to take. "We cannot reveal our plans," ISPR Director-General Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan said.
He said the bodies of the eight soldiers were found by a lashkar of volunteers of the Mehsud tribe who turned them over to the authorities. "The soldiers appear to have been killed a few days ago," Gen Sultan said.
Twelve soldiers, including a major of the Pakistan Army, were killed and 22 wounded when their convoy bringing in food and fuel to thousands of troops battling militants near Wana, was ambushed near Serwakai on Monday.
The militants had taken the eight soldiers hostage before setting army supply vehicles on fire. The incident occurred between Serwakai and Madijan, on the boundary of areas of the Mehsud and the second largest Ahmadzai Wazirs tribe.
Authorities, however, had held the Mehsuds responsible under the territorial and collective responsibility clause of the 1901 Frontier Crimes Regulation. The tribe, fearing a confrontation with the government, immediately raised a lashkar of thousands of armed volunteers to capture suspects and recover the missing soldiers.
South Waziristan's administrator Muhammad Azam Khan told Dawn that the soldiers' bodies were first spotted by a woman fetching water in a mountainous area, about 8km to the northwest of Serwakai.
On being informed, the Mehsud lashkar retrieved the bodies and handed them over to the authorities, he said. Haji Muhammad Nawaz, an Abdullai Mehsud tribesman, said the bodies were lying in a ditch at the foot of a hill.
"The slain soldiers were in their uniforms with their hands tied behind their backs," Mr Nawaz said. The soldiers appeared to have been killed the day they were held hostage, the administrator said.
"They appeared to have been shot from a close range, mostly in the head and chest," said one official who had seen the bodies. "This is murder in cold blood," Azam Khan said. "Neither does our religion nor our traditions allow killing of hostages," he added.
The bodies were first taken to a scouts fort in Serwakai and later flown to Bannu Cantonment in a helicopter. Sensing the gravity of the matter, a jirga of Mehsud tribesmen immediately went into a session to discuss the possible fallout of the incident and work out a strategy to deal with it.
"This is outrageous and unacceptable," said an angry Mehsud tribesman. "We know how to deal with those who have perpetrated this heinous crime," Haji Nawaz said on phone.
"This is the worst thing that has happened since the creation of Pakistan. We are all mourning like our own sons and brothers have been killed. "We have resolved to go out and hunt down the culprits and kill them," he said.
The soldiers' murder appears to have caused a huge setback to attempts being made to cool down temperatures in the wake of the operation outside Wana that involved the largest ever deployment of military and paramilitary forces in any tribal region since Pakistan's inception.
The incident may also have a huge effect on efforts being made by the Zalikhel tribe in Wana to help recover 12 paramilitary soldiers and two tehsildars - junior level officers in the local administration - being held hostage by militants since the operation against foreign and tribal militants was launched on March 16, an analyst said.
Fifteen paramilitary and one army soldier had died in that operation that had prompted the Pakistan Army to launch Kaloosha-II to flush out foreign militants, believed to be between 400 and 500, and their tribal supporters.
A jirga of the Zalikhels - five of the main suspects wanted by the authorities for supporting and sheltering foreign militants belong to this tribe - is meeting militants at an undisclosed location on Saturday to plead with them to release the paramilitary soldiers and tehsildars.
The Zalikhels have been joined in by a group of clerics and some influential tribesmen from other regions to reinforce efforts to help recover the hostages. Deputy administrator, Wana, Rehmatullah Wazir said he was hopeful the jirga would be able to achieve a breakthrough.
The jirga that had gone to meet militants at an undisclosed location near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border on Thursday returned apparently empty-handed. Officials said the jirga conveyed to the militants the government's main demands - surrender foreign and local militants without any condition and release the hostages.
But a tribal elder said the militants wanted the military laying siege to their villages to pull back and let their cordoned people to get out. Corps Commander, Peshawar, Lt-Gen Safdar Hussain, had told Dawn on Thursday that he planned to wind up the operation in Shin Warsak-Kaloosha area by Saturday.
"We have achieved our objective of destroying and denying sanctuary to militants," he had said. It, however, was not clear whether the army would still want to wrap up the operation after Friday's development.
An official said the army had completed 75 per cent of the work of demolishing houses of suspected militants who had been hostile or had fired on the troops. "They would leave the area the moment they demolish the remaining targeted houses there," the official said.
