Pakistani police yesterday found the bodies of six truck drivers who were kidnapped a few days ago in a restive northwestern town, officials said.
The bodies of the six, who had been shot dead, were found in Thal district, local police official Abdul Rehman told reporters.
“A letter found in the pocket of one dead truck driver said that if anyone supplied goods to the Parachinar Shiite community, he will be treated like this,” Rehman said.
Parachinar, the main town of Kurram tribal district, is a sectarian flashpoint where activists from the rival Shiite and Sunni Muslim groups have clashed in the past.
A police spokesman confirmed the incident, but did not identify the suspects, saying an investigation was in progress.
Shiites account for about 20 percent of Pakistan’s Sunni-dominated population. The two communities usually coexist peacefully, but more than 4,000 people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence since the late 1980s.
Attacks by Islamist extremists, meanwhile, have killed more than 3,100 people since July 2007. Most attacks are blamed on the Pakistani Taliban.
In a separate incident, militants early yesterday blew up a boys middle school in Alingarh village of Mohmand tribal district, where troops are hunting Taliban rebels, local administration chief Amjad Ali Khan said.
“The school was destroyed in the bombing, but there were no casualties,” Khan said.
Militants blew up another boys primary school early yesterday in Khyber, a lawless tribal district bordering Afghanistan, local administration chief Shafeerullah Wazir told reporters, but there were no casualties.
Separately, paramilitary forces arrested a rebel commander wanted for the 2005 kidnapping and murder of six Chinese engineers after a gun battle late Friday in the border town of Chaman in the restive southwest province of Baluchistan.
“We have arrested a Baluch Liberation Army commander Haji Murad Khan after a chase and a gunfight and seized explosives, wireless sets, Indian and Afghan currency from him,” Colonel Asad Shahzada of the Pakistan Frontier Corps said.
“Khan, along with two others, was intercepted when he was entering into Pakistan from Afghanistan in a car. Two others fled after firing, but Khan was arrested,” Shahzada said.
The government had offered a bounty of 3 million rupees (US$36,000) for his arrest.
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