The festivities on Tuesday came as part of a Pakistain army operation to repel Talibs who had crossed over from Kunar province
... which is right down the road from Chitral. Kunar is Haqqani country.....
in Afghanistan last Friday and occupied the village of Batwar in the Bajaur tribal district.
"At least 15 of our soldiers are still missing," a security bigshot told Agence La Belle France Presse.
Another security official said "more or less" that number of soldiers were missing but declined to give the exact total.
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) front man Sirajud Din sent AFP a video showing a thug commander posing with 12 heads arranged on the ground which he claimed were from soldiers they had killed.
"Praise be to God that the mujahideen in Bajaur agency have managed to kill the infidel soldiers of Pakistain," he says.
"Many of them were killed by bullets, 12 of them as you see have been beheaded, you see 12 heads here, and more heads are on the way."
The commander is flanked in the footage by gunnies including one wielding a huge axe.
The video also showed the identity cards of the dead men, but military sources have so far not said whether they are the missing soldiers or confirmed that those shown in the video are Pak troops.
In July the TTP released a video showing the heads of 17 Pak soldiers they claimed to have killed in a cross-border attack on a checkpost in the northwestern district of Upper Dir.
Intelligence officials blamed that attack on loyalists of Pak Mullah Fazlullah
...son-in-law of TNSM head Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullahs Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan...
, who fled to Afghanistan after losing control of the Swat
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
valley to the army.
Fighting in Bajaur in the past week has claimed at least 50 lives, including 31 beturbanned goons and two members of a government-backed peace committee who were killed on Monday.
Bajaur is one of seven districts in Pakistain's semi-autonomous tribal belt, where Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked beturbanned goons have carved out strongholds used to plot attacks on Pakistain.
Pakistain has lost more than 3,000 soldiers in the fight against homegrown gun-hung tough guys but has resisted U.S. pressure to do more to eliminate havens used by those fighting the Americans in Afghanistan.