Pakistan was searching for dozens of missing troops, the majority of whom are believed to be in Afghan Taliban custody, after at least 25 captured soldiers were recovered from Afghanistan, intelligence officials said Thursday, DPA reported.
Security forces lost contact Monday with 65 soldiers guarding the Shonkari post in the Mohmand district on the Afghan border after Islamic militants overran their positions.
A senior intelligence official said on the condition of not being named that at least seven soldiers were killed in the raid. Their bodies and the surviving troops were taken to Afghanistan, he said.
"After talks with militants, 25 of them [the captured soldiers] have been recovered, but 40 are still missing," he said, adding that the seven dead soldiers were included in the number of missing because their bodies have yet to be retrieved.
The official said 14 soldiers were handed over Wednesday and Thursday to Pakistan's consulate in the border town of Jalalabad and a helicopter was dispatched to return them to Pakistan.
Eleven soldiers were released Tuesday and they safely returned to their base, he said.
All missing soldiers belong to the paramilitary Frontier Corps, which is spearheading the fight against the Taliban in Pakistan's tribal areas along the Afghan border.
The Mohmand tribal district has been a hotbed for local and foreign militants, and security forces have launched a campaign to drive them out of the area.
Militants move across the porous Afghan-Pakistan border at leisure, using Mohmand's difficult terrain to train, hide and launch attacks on foreign troops in Afghanistan.
They also regularly attack Pakistani forces, which have been in the area since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Militant attacks on soldiers have led to bloody encounters, and in a similar clash on Wednesday, 10 soldiers and 38 militants were killed on the border of the Mohmand and Bajour districts.
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