PAKISTANI MILITANTS EXECUTE 15 SOLDIERS

Islamist militants claimed responsibility Thursday for killing 15 Pakistani paramilitary troops. The bodies of the men, kidnapped from a fort near the Afghan border in December, were found in a village in North Waziristan, a tribal region that serves as a stronghold for several Pakistani and Afghan insurgent groups, local officials said. The victims were members of the Frontier Constabulary and had been abducted by gunmen on Dec. 22. The Pakistani Taliban said the executions were in retaliation for a Pakistani military operation in the Khyber tribal region Jan. 1 in which 12 Taliban militants died, among them Qari Kamran, a commander.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for the United States to hand over its biggest military prison in Afghanistan within one month, despite repeated warnings that Afghan institutions are unprepared to detain or try suspected terrorists. Karzai claimed that Afghan government investigators found violations of the Afghan constitution and international human rights conventions at the Parwan prison, which houses about 2,600 inmates near Bagram Air Base. He did not provide details about the alleged violations but said in a statement that they constituted a "breach of Afghan sovereignty."