Militants Release Students and Teachers Taken Hostage at Pakistan School

Gunmen have released unharmed dozens of students and teachers they had taken hostage at a school in north-west Pakistan, the government said today.

After a standoff lasting several hours, the seven gunmen gave themselves up to a delegation of tribal negotiators, the interior ministry spokesman, Javed Iqbal Cheema, said.

One of the negotiators, former MP Shar Abdul Aziz, said that in return for releasing the hostages and giving up their weapons, the gunmen were given safe passage and had since left for an unknown destination. Local police declined to comment.

The gunmen had barged into the school in Bannu, near the town of Karak, after a chase and an exchange of fire that killed an eighth gunman and wounded a police officer.

The chase began after they abducted a health official of a neighboring district and two of his relatives, who were later freed, also unharmed.
Tribal elders were brought in to negotiate with the militants as police surrounded the school.

The militants had "all types of weapons like rocket launchers and grenades", said the district police chief, Dar Ali Khattak.

The incident came as the president, Pervez Musharraf, was traveling through Europe seeking to allay fears about Pakistan's stability.

Musharraf, who appeared at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, met the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, in London today.

"It was incidental that those criminals entered the school," Musharraf told a joint news conference with Brown. "It has been resolved peacefully."

There were conflicting reports on the number of children and teachers who had been held. Aziz said there were 315 children and 10 teachers, but one local police chief said there had been 25 children and seven teachers detained inside a single classroom.

Cheema described the gunmen as "criminals" rather than Islamist militants.

There have been heavy clashes between the military and pro-Taliban militants in the tribal region in north-west Pakistan, on the border with Afghanistan.

Last week, Pakistani forces killed up to 30 militants in clashes near the city of Peshawar, after militants seized four trucks carrying ammunition and other paramilitary supplies.

Security forces recently launched a ground and air assault against Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban commander accused of orchestrating the assassination in December of the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto.