"Terrorists surrender, hostages freed in Peshawar"

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar hostage drama ended as the three terrorists surrendered while the two detained hostages were freed after operation. According to ISPR, the situation is completely under control in Peshawar cantonment.

Earlier, suspected militants overpowered their guards during interrogation on Saturday in an army building in northwest Pakistan and took two of them hostage, the army said.

Police had initially said a number of insurgents tried to get into a secure area close to theUS consulate and army buildings in Peshawar city, with exchanges of gunfire between the militants and security forces.

“Some of the terrorists who were kept in a building for interrogations overpowered their two sentries during interrogations,” military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told private TV channel.

“Terrorists are still inside the building, we are making all our efforts to solve this problem,” he said.

Police said the army had sealed off the site while intermittent gunfire continued.

An AFP reporter at the scene said army and police had blocked all the roads into the area while helicopters patrolled the skies.

Bashir Bilour, a provincial cabinet minister whose home is nearby, told AFP that the first round of firing continued for 30 minutes.

“Soldiers have also entered my hujra (visitors’ compound). I cannot go outside,” he added.

There were no immediate reports of any casualties.

Bombs and attacks blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have hit soldiers, government officials and civilians across nuclear-armed Pakistan since government troops besieged a radical mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.

Such attacks have killed more than 3,574 people in the past three years, concentrated largely in the northwest and border areas with Afghanistan, where 141,000 US and NATO troops have been fighting the Taliban for nine years.

A roadside remote control bomb on Monday killed two anti-Taliban militia men in Mattni on the outskirts of Peshawar and wounded five others, police said. — AFP