By Prensa Latina
Islamabad : The 250 children and their teachers held hostage in a school in the northern Pakistani district of Bannu were freed by the seven armed rebels holding them on Monday, after Tribal Council (JIRGA) Assembly mediation.
Pakistani Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Sheema told press that the captors surrendered their weapons and handed over the children to the members of the Tribes and Elders Traditional Assembly.
Sheema said the seven are in the hands of the JIRGA and the local police.
JIRGA is the assembly regulating the tribes in northwestern Pakistani, especially the ethnic Pashtun – the majority in those mountain regions bordering Afghanistan.
Deputy Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz said the 250 children, between 8 and 12 years of age, were held captive by seven religious militants in the village of Domail, close to the tribal town of Karak. The kidnappers, armed with grenades and rocket launchers, wanted to go to the Afghanistan border.
The Pakistani Army is attacking the forces of religious leader Mullah Baitullah Mehsud on the border, in confrontations in which hundreds of rebels and Pakistani soldiers have lost their lives.