Local Taliban blew up two video shops and torched a cable television operator's office in Kohat, officials said on Friday. There were no casualties in the blasts, which happened late Thursday in Kohat, a town close to Pakistan's troubled tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
The attackers forced people out of the local office of World Cable 2000 and sprinkled kerosene over it before setting it on fire, the officials said. Later they detonated crudely-made bombs at the video shops, which were empty at the time. Both shops were badly damaged. Residents said the attacks followed threats to the owners to shut down their business because they were un-Islamic.
"I have received a telephone call from a tribal Jirga (council of elders) that both of them have been released," their brother Khurshid told reporters in Tank. The release was negotiated by an eight-member council led by a local cleric, he said.
A council member told him that Farid and Humayun had been handed over to the Jirga and they would reach Tank late Friday, Khurshid said but gave no further details.