PESHAWAR, Sept 4: Paramilitary troops raided a village in a tribal region bordering Afghanistan on Wednesday where six Al Qaeda men were thought to be hiding but found none of the foreign suspects, officials said.

They said four people had been taken into custody in the raid on the Janikhel village and five more in the nearby Bannu town, but all were local people, not the Arab suspects the authorities had been searching for.

Among those detained was Maulana Shamsul Haq, who was thought to have given refuge to the wanted men, and his nephew, said a government official.

He said that all of the detainees were Pakistanis. He said authorities were still searching for the suspects, whom they thought might be hiding in or near the village.

The official said the troops destroyed Maulana Haq’s house with rocket fire after searching it. He said there were no casualties.

Officials said that 1,800 paramilitary troops had taken up positions near the Janikhel village for two days before the operation, which was led by the army after the villagers refused to hand over the suspects despite protracted negotiations.

Officials said the men they were searching for were “Arabs”. Local people said five of them were thought to be Saudi Arabians or Indonesians.

Earlier, local authorities brought in some Ulema to hold talks with tribesmen in the village.

“The tribal authorities, tribal notables and religious scholars are right now holding talks,” a resident of Janikhel, told Reuters.

Tribal elder Malik Dil Nawaz said the arrested men were from the village. “They grew up in front of me,” he told Reuters by telephone. “None of them is a foreigner. We are very poor people. We are being badly mistreated.”

Arif Mahmood adds from Bannu: The troops laying siege to Janikhel fired many rounds in the village.

“There were several explosions in the afternoon. The shells seem to have landed near the house of a local religious leader. These appear to be warning shots,” Shamimullah, a student in the village, told Dawn by phone.

He said the shells landed near the house of Maulana Haq, a key religious leader in the area.

The authorities also arrested Maulvi Aziz and Maulvi Nizamuddin, he said.