ISLAMIC militants disguised as policemen killed 10 foreign climbers and a Pakistani guide in a brazen overnight raid against their campsite at the base of one of the world's tallest mountains in northern Pakistan, officials said.

The attackers struck at the foot of one of the world's highest mountains, killing Chinese and Ukrainian climbers in an area of the far-flung north not previously associated with violence or Islamist militancy.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, saying it had set up a new faction to kill foreigners to avenge US drone strikes after its second in command was killed in the northwestern tribal belt on the Afghan border.

The deaths call into question the future in Pakistan of foreign mountaineering and trekking expeditions, which provide the last vestige of international tourism in a country on the frontline of Al-Qaeda and Taliban violence.

The dead foreigners included three Ukrainians, two Slovakians, two Chinese, one Lithuanian, one Nepalese and one Chinese-American, according to Rehman and tour operators who were working with the climbers.

The climbers were staying at a base camp for Nanga Parbat, which at 8126 metres is the second highest mountain in Pakistan and the ninth highest in the world.

The base camp is at Fairy Meadows in the Diamer district of Gilgit-Baltistan, which borders China and Kashmir.

"The incident took place around 10pm. They were mountaineers," Diamer police official Mohammed Naveed said.

"Gunmen came and opened fire on them. It is confirmed that they have been killed," he said.

"Militants surrounded a tent camping site around the mountain Nanga Parbat and shot dead people who were in it," Lakomov said.

The Himalayas in northern Pakistan offer some of the most spectacular climbing in the world. Its peaks are a magnet for experienced mountaineers, often from Europe.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said the attackers were dressed as Gilgit Scouts, a paramilitary police unit.

"They abducted two guides and through them reached the area. One guide was killed in the shoot-out. One is alive. He is now detained and being questioned," he said.

Pakistan condemned the attack, but the killings will raise serious questions about security failures and embarrass a country already suffering from a poor image.

Helicopters were dispatched to recover the bodies, and police and paramilitary were ordered into the area, officials said.

While Gilgit-Baltistan has seen deadly sectarian violence targeting Pakistan's Shi'ite Muslim minority, foreigners have never before been targeted in such a remote part of the region, which officials said was inaccessible by road.

A spokesman for Pakistan's main umbrella Taliban faction claimed responsibility.

"One of our factions, Junood ul-Hifsa, did it. It is to avenge the killing of Maulvi Wali ur-Rehman," said spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan.

Rehman died on May 29 in a US drone attack on a house in North Waziristan, the most notorious Taliban and Al-Qaeda stronghold in Pakistan on the Afghan border.

The TTP, a nebulous collection of factions, has been waging a domestic insurgency since July 2007 but is not previously known to have a presence in Gilgit.



Originally published as Death toll from militant attack rises