Pakistan rescues boys trained as suicide bombers

Pakistani security forces fighting Taliban militants in and around the Swat Valley has saved nearly a dozen boys brainwashed to become suicide bombers, according to officials.

A senior security officer in the North West Frontier Province said nine boys were found during raids, while two had voluntarily surrendered, and an army the commander in Swat talked with more being presented to their families.

They have been brainwashed in such a way that they even call their parents infidels, "Bashir Bilour, senior minister in the provincial government.

Bilour said the boys were shown films of the oppression of Muslims in the Palestinian territories and Indian-held Kashmir, and had the alleged religious instruction to convince them that they would go to heaven if they killed the enemies of Islam.

Brigadier Tahir Hameeda, a leading military operations officer in Mingora, Swat main city, said the Taliban had forced many families to let them take their boys.

He said some had since returned to their parents, which in turn gave them to the authorities because of his brainwashed state. The government has worked out how to rehabilitate boys between nine and 18 years.

Taliban has regularly claimed responsibility for suicide attacks carried out by boys in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistani security forces have shown Western journalists places where children have been trained, but there was no independent confirmation available.

Swat First WAZIRISTAN NEXT

The military launched an offensive nearly three months ago against the Taliban stronghold of militants crept into the neighboring state municipalities Buner Valley, only 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital, Islamabad.

Around 20,000 troops have been deployed in Swat operations and in the last two weeks hundreds of thousands of people who had fled the fighting has started to go home.

But the guerrillas were still put up resistance in the north in Swat valley, and even the outskirts of Mingora remained uncertain.

Tuesday villagers found decapitated body of a policeman on the outskirts of town. He went missing four days earlier.

According to the military, nearly 1,800 militants have been killed during the campaign in Swat, Buner and Lower Dir district, but it is not possible by the independent control losses.

The army was ordered more than a month ago to perform an operation further south in the Waziristan region, to punish the Pakistani Taliban The commander Baitullah Mehsud.

Efforts have so far been limited to the sealing of his stronghold in the wilds South Waziristan tribal chieftain region and pressure Mehsud's forces with air strikes and medium range artillery.