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Teen beheads Pakistani soldier
27/08/2007 17:46 - (SA)
Dera Ismail Khan - Pro-Taliban militants have released a video of an apparently teenage boy beheading one of 16 Pakistani soldiers kidnapped in a restive tribal area bordering Afghanistan.
The gruesome recording, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, will likely put further pressure on embattled US ally President Pervez Musharraf to crack down on Islamist violence in the frontier region.
The 35-minute video entitled Revenge first shows the 16 soldiers, all of them in uniform, who were taken hostage on August 9 in the South Waziristan tribal district.
Four teenage boys with Kalashnikov assault rifles, daggers and headbands with jihadi slogans are then shown along with one of the soldiers kneeling in front of them.
One boy cuts off the soldier's head using a knife and holds it up for the camera. The soldier's body was recovered on August 14 from a nearby town.
The video shows the victim saying just before his death that "security forces should not fight against the Taliban".
The Pakistani military strongly condemned the video, saying it had not seen the recording but was aware of its existence.
"It proves that they are terrorists. It is an act contrary to tribal customs and is also a cowardly act to kill an unarmed human being," said Major General Waheed Arshad.
Negotiations are still underway to free the remaining soldiers as well as a Pakistani military officer and three other officials who were kidnapped in South Waziristan on Friday.
Pakistan has been hit by a wave of Islamist bloodshed since last month's siege of the extremist Red Mosque in the capital in which more than 100 people died, most of them militants.
- AFP
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