At the rate militants are capturing our troops in tribal areas…soon we wont have any troops left to fight any war. This is getting pathetic.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKISL18236920070912
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - About 200 pro-Taliban militants attacked a paramilitary post in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday and captured 12 soldiers, an official said, in the latest incident of spiralling violence in the region.
Separately, a militant spokesman in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border said they would kill three soldiers a day from a group of 300 they captured last month, if security forces did not stop attacks, Al Jazeera television reported.
The violence is adding to a sense of crisis as President Pervez Musharraf, who is also army chief and an important U.S. ally, attempts to secure another term in office in the face of legal challenges.
The United States regularly calls on Pakistan to do more to tackle militants in its northwestern border regions, where U.S. officials say al Qaeda and the Taliban are able to regroup.
While the vast majority of Pakistanis abhor militant violence, many also object to Musharraf’s support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
Violence in northwest Pakistan has escalated since July when a peace deal with militants broke down in one region and the army stormed a radical mosque in the capital, Islamabad, to quell a Taliban-style movement linked to militants in the northwest.
In the latest attack, militants firing rocket-propelled grenades raided at a post on the outskirts of the town of Bannu in North West Frontier Province before dawn.
“After the rocket attack, about 200 militants launched a physical attack on the post and kidnapped 12 men of the Frontier Constabulary,” said an officer in the force, Amir Badshah Utmankheil.
The abduction came as authorities were still trying to negotiate the release of paramilitary soldiers captured as they travelled in a convoy last month in South Waziristan, which is also in the northwest.
The military say about 240 soldiers were taken and elders from ethnic Pashtun tribes are trying to mediate and negotiate their release.
The militants say they are holding 300 soldiers and will start to kill three of them every day if security forces do not stop shelling, which a militant spokesman told Al Jazeera television had killed two civilians this week.
The militants are demanding the withdrawal of troops from the area and the release of 15 of their comrades.
Late last month, the militants released 18 paramilitary soldiers and a civilian official after holding most of them for three weeks. But they killed one of the soldiers and videotaped a teenaged boy cutting the man’s head off.
Several hundred people have been killed in violence since July, most in the northwest. But more than 50 people have been killed in suicide blasts in Islamabad and the nearby city of Rawalpindi, where the army has its headquarters.
On Tuesday, 18 people were killed by a suicide bomber in another northwestern city.
