At least 15 people were killed today when al Qaeda captives being transported to a jail by Pakistani army and paramilitary guards grabbed weapons and opened fire, a local official said.
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Al Qaeda prisoners captured by Afghan anti-Taliban fighters in Tora Bora. Photography: Reuters
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The Pakistani army and paramilitary frontier forces were transporting 156 captives - mainly Arabs who had escaped from eastern Afghanistan - from a detention center in the border town of Parachinar in the Kurram tribal agency, the official said.
The Arabs, many of them Yemenis, had fled the Tora Bora mountains where Osama bin Laden had been believed to hiding and were captured by Pakistani border patrols.
They grabbed weapons from their guards as they were being taken from Parachinar to a jail in the town of Kohat and opened fire, the private Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said.
Seven Arabs and eight Pakistani troops were killed in the shootout in Sadda, which resembled a similar uprising by al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners in Qala-i-Janghi fort in northern Mazar-i-Sharif last month in which hundreds of the captives were killed.
An unknown number of the prisoners escaped, AIP said. Pakistan has sent more forces to patrol the region and to try to recapture the escapees.
Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said Pakistan was doing all it could to stop al Qaeda forces crossing the border.
"One thing is quite clear - Osama bin Laden and members of the al Qaeda will find no sanctuary in Pakistan," he said.