Al-Qaeda militants killed in Pakistan: were they Chechens?

Citing sources in the Pakistani law enforcing authorities, the country's press asserts that the four Al-Qaeda militants killed in the Wednesday clash with police in Northern Pakistan are probably Chechens.

According to Pakistani law enforcers, the clash took place on a highway 3 kilometres away from Kohata, the capital of an autonomous district of the Pashto-inhabited North-West Frontier. It began with a police patrol trying to stop a mini bus with four passengers on Jarma Bridge and being attacked with grenades. Summoning up reinforcements from a special task force, police retaliated against the militants, eventually killing all four. Two of the policemen suffered severe wounds.

According to the Pakistani Observer newspaper, police have arrested the driver of the bus, who said he had been hired in Miram Shah, the capital of another Pashto-inhabited district of Northern Waziristan, to drive four people to the capital of Peshawar.

Searching through the bus, police found 4 Kalashnikov assault rifles, a machine-gun, two pistols, a grenade launcher, 15 hand grenades, and two portable radio transmitters, reported the News newspaper. Most likely, the militants had been intending to stage a terrorist act in Peshawar.

At the same time, the Frontier Post newspaper cites a source in the law enforcing authorities as saying Pakistani police had recently arrested a total of 293 people, all of whom were suspected of having contacts with terrorists.