PESHAWAR, Aug 21: A member of a three-man jirga appointed to hold talks with captors of 15 FC personnel has expressed the hoped that the hostages will be released in phases.

Five of the hostages are expected to be released on Thursday while the jirga has been insisting on the release of all the hostages together.

Sixteen FC personnel were kidnapped from Bannu on Aug 9. One of them, Laiq Hussain, was killed on Aug 15 and his body was found in a football stadium in the Frontier Region of Jandola.

The captors are demanding release of their 10 colleagues in exchange for freeing the FC personnel.

Sources said they also wanted the army not to set up checkpoints in the agency.

Another jirga of 21 members is scheduled to hold talks with the kidnappers on Thursday.

Meanwhile, elders of the Stoorikhel tribe of Aurakzai Agency have called upon the NWFP governor, chief minister and the commandant of the Frontier Constabulary to ensure early recovery of three kidnapped FC personnel belonging to their tribe.

They said if the FC personnel were not freed within a week they would start detaining government employees belonging to tribes blamed for the kidnapping.

Addressing a press conference at the Peshawar Press Club on Tuesday, the elders said nine personnel of the Frontier Constabulary had left their homes for Bannu at the end of their vacations on July 31.

When they reached Sadgai, an area of the Bakakhel tribe, 12km from the Bannu cantonment, some people, who were collecting donation to build a mosque, shot one of them dead and kidnapped three others. Five FC men escaped.

Malik Wahid Ali, one of the elders, said he had met the Bannu DCO and FR Bannu officials who assured him that efforts would be made for the safe release of the personnel.

He said he had also met elders of the Bakakhel tribe.

According to him, the tribesmen had not been kidnapped by any militant group or the Taliban, but by local Bakakhel tribesmen.

He said that the kidnappers had demanded Rs1 million ransom and release of their five colleagues from various jails in tribal areas and the Adiala jail.

He said he himself had talked to the kidnappers who had put these two demands.

He said they had now come to know that their men were in the custody of the Janikhel Wazir tribe.

He regretted that the tribesmen had been kidnapped from the constituency of Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani.

He urged officials of the FR Bannu and the DCO to get the hostages freed by any means, even by using the Frontier Crimes Regulation.

He said if the tribesmen were not released within a week, they would start arresting Jani Khel and Bakakhel tribesmen working in Aurakzai Agency, Kohat and other areas.