Pro-Taliban fighters have killed three Pakistani army intelligence officers and taken 30 police officers hostage in the northwestern Swat valley.
The security officials were killed in retaliation for the torture of Taliban prisoners in custody, Taliban officials told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.
They said they had encircled the Swat valley police station and that the police were hostages and had given up their weapons.
The dead officers were returning to Mingora, the main town of Swat, when gunmen sprayed their vehicle with bullets late on Monday, killing them on the spot.
A spokesman for Maulana Fazlullah, a cleric who is leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, accepted responsibility.
"We have killed them because people from the security agencies arrest our people and brutally torture them," the spokesman, Muslim Khan, told Reuters news agency.
Fazlullah told Al Jazeera in an interview on Tuesday that he had enough suicide bombers to "teach Pakistan a lesson it will not forget".
Imran Khan, reporting from Swat valley for Al Jazeera, said the cleric is said to be behind numerous attacks on Pakistan forces, cross-border raids into Afghanistan and the implementation of a strict Islamic law.
Government officials confirmed the death of the three men, but refused to say which security agency they belonged to.
Meanwhile, security officials in Pakistan were seeking confirmation on Tuesday that a top al-Qaeda expert on chemical and biological weapons had been killed in a suspected US missile strike.
The news came as Yousuf Raza Gilani, the Pakistani prime minister, held his first talks with George W Bush, the US president, centered on how to tackle Islamic fighters based in the lawless tribal zones.
Gilani, whose new government has been facing intense US pressure to crack down on the fighters, urged the United States not to act "unilaterally" against the Taliban in his country.
No confirmation
There was no immediate confirmation from Washington or the US-led coalition in Afghanistan about Monday's strike in the South Waziristan tribal district, which a senior Pakistani official said was thought to have killed Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar.
The Egyptian fighter - who is also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri - had a five-million-dollar bounty on his head.
"We believe he was killed in this strike," a senior Pakistan intelligence official based in the northwest city of Peshawar told AFP news agency under cover of anonymity.
"It was his hideout, and information that has been shared with us says he was targeted in this strike."
Officials earlier said three Arab fighters and three Pakistani youths were killed when missiles fired from a suspected US drone hit a house attached to a village mosque.
Umar's wife and children were believed to have been injured in the attack, Pakistani officials said.
Residents said the victims of the strike were hastily buried in the hours after the attack.
Pakistan's military said it was still seeking confirmation, as claims that Umar was killed in another air strike in the Bajaur tribal region in January 2006 turned out to be untrue.
PHOTO CAPTION
File photo shows Pakistani army soldiers standing guard on a mountain near Matta, in the Swat valley.
Al-Jazeera