Pro-Taliban extremists in a Pakistani tribal area stoned and then shot dead two men and a woman for alleged adultery, officials and witnesses said Thursday.
Some 800 tribesmen watched the executions by the Lashkar-i-Islam (Army of Islam) group on Wednesday in the Khyber tribal district on the border with Afghanistan, they said.
The trio were tied up with ropes, and tribal elders and other men gathered at a patch of open ground and stoned them. Two masked members of the hardline group then shot them with Kalashnikov rifles, witnesses said.
The killings are likely to fuel concern about the "Talibanisation" of parts of Pakistan and the introduction of Islamic Sharia law, particularly in the tribal areas and in North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan.
"The Lashkar-i-Islam men caught them and after investigations it was proved that they were guilty of adultery," a group member told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Members of the religious group, led by cleric Mangal Bagh, raided a house on Monday and abducted the three after local residents suspected them of "illicit" activities, local residents in the Bara region said.
The victims were named as Allah Noor and Shahzad while the woman was identified as Taslima.
The local administration said it did not intervene in the situation as the restive tribal agencies are semi-autonomous and Pakistani laws do not apply.
"We had reports about the killings, but we do not interfere in the matters related to tribal customs and traditions," a tribal administration official told AFP.
Last year 25 people died in street battles in Bara between mullahs who used illegal radio stations to preach rival versions of Islam. One of the mullahs, Mufti Munir Shakir, is the spiritual leader of the Lashkar-i-Islami chief.
The latest killings come less than two months after two lovers were tied to trees and stoned to death by angry relatives in Donga Bonga village in central Punjab province, in a so-called "honour killing".
Pakistan's conservative tribal areas became a haven for Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants who fled the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. Most people in the region are ethnic Pashtuns, like the Taliban.
Under the ultra-Islamic Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001 in Afghanistan, which was backed by Pakistan, there were numerous reports of women being stoned to death for adultery.
President Pervez Musharraf launched military operations in 2003 to rid the tribal zone of Islamic militants, but he has been criticised for signing peace deals with rebels in North and South Waziristan districts.
Militants in parts of northwest Pakistan have recently torched video shops and televisions and banned barbers from shaving beards.
US Vice President Dick Cheney told Musharraf in February to crack down on Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants who are "regrouping" in the tribal belt.
"Pakistan is paying the price for supporting extremists in Afghanistan. First we got Kalashnikov culture and heroin during the Afghan jihad and now the Talibanisation of our society," said Iqbal Haider, secretary general of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
