Pakistan officials: Taliban kill 4 tribesmen, pin notes to bodies saying they were US spies

Taliban kill 4 they say were US spies in Pakistan

MIR ALI, Pakistan — The bullet-riddled bodies of four tribesmen killed for allegedly spying for the United States were found Sunday in a semiautonomous Pakistani region, witnesses and officials said.

Officials said the four were kidnapped by the Taliban about ten days ago.

Gul Akber Khan, who lives in the village of Srakhula, just outside of Mir Ali, said he heard gunshots in the middle of the night. When he went to the mosque for morning prayers a few hours later, he found the bodies dumped along the road into Miran Shah, the main city in North Waziristan.

Intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, say a note was found by one of the corpses. It warned, in Pashto: “Spies are spies, and they will come to the same fate as these men. … Do not spy for America.”

The tribal regions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, strongholds for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, have seen bloody fighting and regular attacks by American drone aircraft as the Pakistani and U.S. governments try to defeat the Islamist militants.