21 Policemen Shot Dead in Pakistan, Twenty-one tribal policemen believed to have been kidnapped by the Taliban were found shot to death in Pakistan’s troubled northwest tribal region early Sunday, government officials said.
Officials found the bodies shortly after midnight in the Jabai area of the frontier region of Peshawar after being notified by one policeman who escaped, said Naveed Akbar Khan, a top political official in the area. Another policeman was found seriously wounded, Mr. Khan said.
Officials found the bodies shortly after midnight in the Jabai area of the frontier region of Peshawar after being notified by one policeman who escaped, said Naveed Akbar Khan, a top political official in the area. Another policeman was found seriously wounded, Mr. Khan said.
The 23 policemen disappeared before dawn on Thursday, when militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons attacked two posts in the region. Two other police officers were killed in the attacks.
Militants lined the officers up on a cricket field late Saturday night and gunned them down, said another local official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion fell on the Pakistani Taliban, who have been waging a bloody insurgency against the government.
The tribal region on the Afghanistan border is the main sanctuary for the Taliban in Pakistan.
On Saturday, an explosion ripped through a passenger bus at a terminal in the southern city of Karachi, killing 6 people and wounding 52 others, some of whom were in critical condition, said Dr. Seemi Jamali, who works at the hospital where the victims were being treated.
The police were trying to determine whether the blast, which reduced the bus to a charred skeleton, was caused by a bomb or a gas canister that exploded, a police spokesman, Imran Shaukat, said. Many buses in Pakistan run on natural gas.
Karachi has a long history of ethnic and sectarian violence. It is also believed to be home to many Taliban militants who have fled United States drone attacks and Pakistani Army operations in the northwest.
