Pakistani forces have targeted militants in the northwestern Khyber tribal region on and off for more than four years.
“This is revenge for the killing of our comrades in Khyber by Pakistani forces,” Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP), told Reuters.
“We will soon take revenge for other operations too.”
Local officials confirmed that 15 bodies, with signs of torture and gunshot wounds, had been found in the Thal area of the northwestern Hangu district, near the unruly northwestern tribal areas along the porous border with Afghanistan.
The Pakistani soldiers were kidnapped on Dec. 23 when dozens of Taleban militants stormed a paramilitary fort in the northwestern Tank district.
Formed in 2007, the TTP is an umbrella group of various Pakistani militant factions operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Allied with the Afghan Taleban and Al-Qaeda, it pledged to overthrow the Pakistani government after the military started operations against militant groups.
It is blamed for many of the suicide bombings across the country and has carried out audacious attacks, including one on the Pakistan army headquarters near the capital Islamabad in 2009.
The United States has labelled the TTP a terrorist group.
