Pakistani Taliban in Afghanistan have kidnapped more than 30
Pakistani boys who had mistakenly crossed the unmarked border from the
country's lawless northwest, officials said Friday.
They said the
incident took place on Thursday after the group of boys, aged between
12 and 18, left the Gharkhi area of Pakistan's Bajaur tribal region
during celebrations marking the Muslim Eid holiday.
"These boys
inadvertently crossed into Afghanistan while picnicking on the second
day of Eid and were kidnapped by militants," senior local
administration official Syed Nasim told AFP.
Bajaur
administration official Islam Zeb said the boys had been abducted by a
militant group allied with Taliban commander Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, who
led insurgents in Bajaur but is believed to have fled to Afghanistan in
2010.
"The kidnappers belonged to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan's (TTP) Faqir Muhammad group, which used to operate in Bajaur," said Zeb.
Two local intelligence officials confirmed those reports.
Afghan
border police commander General Aminullah Amarkhel, the governor of
Kunar, where the boys vanished, Fazlullah Wahidi, and the local Afghan
Taliban commander all told AFP they were unaware of the incident.
Afghanistan
shares a disputed and unmarked 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) border with
Pakistan, and Taliban and other Al-Qaeda-linked militants have carved
out strongholds on either side.
The Pakistani military has
repeatedly claimed to have eliminated the militant threat in Bajaur,
one of seven districts in the semi-autonomous tribal belt that the
United States sees as the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda.
Another
Pakistani administration official speaking anonymously said security
forces were stretched thin along parts of the frontier.
"It is a porous border and security cover is not available everywhere," he said.
The
last similar incident was in June 2009 when hundreds of Pakistani
students from the tribal North Waziristan region were kidnapped by
Pakistani Taliban as they travelled in a convoy of buses to the
northwestern town of Bannu after their college closed for its summer
vacation.
All were later released unharmed.
Afghanistan and
Pakistan blame each other for several recent cross-border attacks that
have killed dozens and displaced hundreds of families.
The
Pakistani military have accused Faqir Muhammad of being behind an
attack on a Pakistani paramilitary checkpost last week, which killed 25
troops.
It said his group helped co-ordinate the raid, adding
that the terrorists regrouped in the Afghan provinces of Kunar and
Nuristan with Afghan support after their expulsion from Pakistan.
An
escalating border war in the area is fanning tensions at a key juncture
as Afghans and Americans reach out to the Taliban for peace talks.
For
years the neighbours have traded accusations over the Taliban and
Al-Qaeda-linked militants embedded in both countries, who criss-cross
the porous, unmarked border and fight security forces from both
governments.
Afghan officials say that since early May hundreds
of rockets, mortars and artillery shells have been fired from Pakistan
into Afghan villages.
But the Pakistan military admits only that
a few stray rounds may have crossed the border and complains that
villages on its side of the border have been the victim of Afghan-based
Taliban violence.
The row is exacerbated by the fact that
Afghanistan disputes the 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) Durrand Line, the
19th century demarcation of the border that separates Pashtun families
and tribes.
US troops in Afghanistan earlier this year abandoned
remote outposts in the far reaches of Kunar and Nuristan provinces,
where they had failed to win over locals, in favour of concentrating on
larger population centres. AFP
