Man beheaded in Pakistan for alleged spying for USA

Suspected militants beheaded a man and dumped his body in a tribal region near the Afghan border, leaving a note on the corpse accusing him of spying for the United States, a Pakistani intelligence official said Friday.

Villagers found the man's decapitated body in a ditch at the side of a road near Ghulam Khan, a frontier town in the North Waziristan tribal area and alerted authorities, the official said. He requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his job, the AP reports.

A note written in the locally spoken Pashto language found with the body identified the slain man by a single name, Ghafoor, and as a resident of Tanai village in Afghanistan's neighboring Khost province, the official said.

"Those who spy for America will meet this fate," he quoted the note as saying.

Militants have executed scores of tribesmen accused of being spies or of collaborating with Pakistani and U.S. authorities hunting al-Qaida and Taliban militants believed to operate along the remote border.

Hundreds of Pakistani soldiers and suspected militants also have died in the tribal belt in military operations designed to root out the foreign fighters and pressure Pashtun tribes in the area to stop offering them sanctuary.