ISLAMABAD, Jan 18: Thousands of mourners, including militants with rifles, attended a funeral on Thursday in village in North Waziristan of a Taliban fighter allegedly killed in a Nato raid in Afghanistan, witnesses said.

About 4,000 people attended the funeral in Eidak village, said a local tribesman.

The mourners included hundreds of militants who arrived in dozens of pick-up trucks with tinted windows.

Militants used mosque loudspeakers early in the morning in Eidak and Miramshah to announce Abdul Salam’s funeral.

They claimed that he had been killed in Afghanistan a week ago, when the North

Atlantic Treaty Organisation said its forces killed scores of insurgents who had crossed from Pakistan.

The body was among the remains of seven alleged militants that had arrived from Afghanistan and had been taken to their home villages for burial late on Wednesday, an intelligence official said.

A cleric leading the funeral prayers declared the deceased a ‘martyr’.—AP