The incidents were the latest in a series blamed on hardliners who are seeking to emulate Afghanistan’s 1996-2001 Taleban regime by introducing harsh Islamic laws and punishments.

In the lawless Mohmand tribal district bordering Afghanistan, pro-Taleban rebels decapitated six members of a kidnapping-for-ransom gang after a blood-soaked feud, local government official Miraj Khan said.

It started when militants on Thursday night raided the house of the gang’s chief in connection with the death of one of their colleagues, the official said.

The gang leader opened fire, killing four of the militants, but they later killed him and five of his family members, burned down his house and seized another six of his followers.

“The militants on Friday publicly beheaded all six of them while holding funeral prayers for their own colleagues,” Miraj told AFP.

Meanwhile a hardline Islamic vigilante group lashed three alleged kidnappers in front of a crowd of 20,000 people in Matta, a town in the conservative Swat Valley in North West Frontier Province.

“Such punishments will deter others from committing crimes,” hardline cleric Maulana Fazal Ullah said in his sermon before the lashings by the group which calls itself the Eagle Force.

The three men were found guilty of kidnapping two young girls by a committee of Islamic clerics and sentenced to 15, 25 and 30 lashes respectively, which were administered outside a religious school, Ullah said.

Police confirmed that three men were publicly whipped but said that they were unable to take any action because Ullah had a large following of armed men.

“He has declared a holy war against the government and it is not the police’s job to fight a war,” a senior police official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Swat was until recently one of Pakistan’s top tourist destinations, but has become increasingly violent and radicalised amid anger against a government raid on the Al-Qaeda-linked Red Mosque in Islamabad in July.

Officials have warned that extremists following Taleban-style doctrine are spreading outwards from the tribal areas, where battles between militants and troops this week left 250 people dead.