Tribal elders seek to get prisoners freed

Tribal elders tried on Wednesday to secure the release of 14 government men as part of efforts to negotiate a halt to a bloody week-long battle between troops and al Qaeda fighters.
But even as the elders were trying to end the fighting in the South Waziristan tribal area on the Afghan border, militants appeared to be stepping up attacks elsewhere in an effort to divert government forces.
Pakistan Army said it had surrounded hundreds of tribal fighters and their foreign militant allies, perhaps including Uzbek and Chechen militant leaders, but officials acknowledged that some might have escaped.
Elders have tried for three days to persuade the tribal fighters to surrender, hand over the foreign militants and release the 14 soldiers and officials thought to have been captured at the start of the clashes.
The latest team of elders to go and meet the militants had demanded progress on the release of the detainees by 10:00 am on Thursday, a top security official said.
Asked what would happen if the 14 were not freed by them, Brigadier Mamood Shah, the region's security chief, said it would be up to a council of elders, or jirga, to decide how to deal with their fellow tribal miscreants.
Shah said the area where the 14 were being held had been surrounded and none of the foreign fighters could escape.
"The situation is generally calm. There's not much resistance," he told reporters in Peshawar.
Two attack helicopters hovered over the area where the fighters have been holed up in well-defended mud-walled compounds but there was no firing on Wednesday.
As well as Uzbeks and Chechens, there could be some Arabs and militants from China in the area, Shah said.
A military spokesman declined to say if the attack in Peshawar, and several other raids on army camps and convoys in the border region in recent days, might be connected with the fighting in South Waziristan.
"It's part of terrorism," said Major-General Shaukat Sultan.
Shah also played down the attacks: "These incidents are aimed at harassing the civilian population".