Al-Qaeda Militants Arrested In Pakistan Attempt To Escape

Six Pakistani guards and seven al-Qaeda militants were killed Wednesday in the north of the country when the Arab terrorists, arrested when crossing the border, tried to escape while being taken to a prison near Peshawar, the main city of Pakistan's north-western border province. A total of 156 foreign mercenaries, mainly Arabs, who fought in Afghanistan on the Taliban's side and arrested on the border in the autonomous region of Kurram, were transported from the prison in the town of Parachinar to Kohat camp near Peshawar in three buses and two trucks for interrogation. In one of the buses the arrested militants attacked the guards and seized weapons. When they tried to remove the driver and hijack the bus, the latter fell in a deep roadside ravine. Terrorists tried to escape, and a shoot-out began. Helicopters were used, and the local Pashtuns joined the operation of catching the mercenaries from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Tunisia, Algiers, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and other countries. Eighteen fugitives have not been found so far.