Taliban behead Peshawar police officer

PESHAWAR: Security forces Thursday recovered the beheaded corpse of a police officer abducted by militants in Peshawar, police said.

The body of inspector Tariq Khan was dumped on a roadside in Matani, on the outskirts of the city, local police officer Farhad Khan said.

'He was slaughtered by Taliban militants. They placed his severed head over his body,' he said. The police official was kidnapped by militants three days ago, Khan added.

He said it was the first beheading of a police official in Peshawar, although militants in restive tribal regions on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan frequently kill local tribesmen and Afghan refugees.

Militants accuse them of spying for the Pakistani government, or for US and foreign forces battling the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan.

The violence-plagued tribal region has has become a stronghold for hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaeda militants who poured into the area after US-led invasion toppled Afghanistan's Taliban regime in 2001.