One of the boys said the Taliban had kidnapped him and told him he would be trained for the jihad. 'They trained us and gave us little food. Three to four boys would get one chapati and some green tea. They warned us that anyone trying to escape would be slaughtered,' he said.

The boys said they escaped from the training camps after four days and managed to return home.

'On our fourth morning at the camp, we got up along with other Taliban for prayers. We went out of the barracks for ablution and ran away,' said two boys.

The Pakistani security forces had April 26 launched a major offensive against the Taliban in the Malakand division of the North West Frontier Province after they reneged on a controversial peace deal with the provincial government.

Under the deal, the militants were to lay down their arms in return for the imposition of Sharia laws in Swat and six other districts of the Malakand division. Instead, they moved south from their Swat headquarters and occupied Buner district that is just 100 km from Islamabad.

The operations had begun in Lower Dir, the home district of radical cleric Sufi Mohammad, who had brokered the peace deal and who is the father-in-law of Swat Taliban commander Maulana Fazlullah. The operations, which have now all but concluded, later spread to Buner and Swat.

Some three million civilians were displaced by the fighting. Large numbers of them have now begun to return home.

The military says over 1,500 Taliban were killed in the fighting.