MARDAN/LANDI KOTAL, March 20: Four bodies were found in Ibrahim Khan village of Mardan district on Tuesday, police and locals said.

They said that farmers of the area spotted the bodies, lying along the main Mardan-Charsadda Road, early in the morning when they were going to their fields.

They said that the residents of the area informed officials of Saddar police station about presence of the bodies. A heavy contingent of police reached the area and shifted all the four bodies to district headquarters hospital. Dawn

Sddar police station SHO Hidayatullah Shah told that the ages of all the dead persons, having beards, were between 25 and 30. He said that one of the deceased was identified as Mohammad Arif, a resident of Normankhel area of Mardan city, when some of his relatives visited the hospital.

The tehsil municipal administration buried the remaining three bodies in Said Jalal Bukhari graveyard.

According to hospital sources, there were no signs of torture or bullets on the bodies. It seemed that the deceased were poisoned to death by the unidentified killers, they said.

In Khyber Agency, political administration has ordered the residents of Shalobar to vacate their houses so that a 'peaceful' search operation can be launched in the area.

The Khasadar Force morning made announcements through loudspeakers on Tuesday in Nao Gazi Baba and Mashomano Adeera localities of Shalobar, advising people to vacate the area so that security forces could carry out a search operation.

The people were told that activists of banned militant outfit Lashkar-i-Islam were hiding in some localities of Shalobar. “The proposed operation is aimed at clearing the area of militants and it is in the interest of people to move out of Shalobar to save their lives,” they were told.

The residents were directed to cross the checkpoints, established at Qambarabad, to make their screening easy for the forces.

Security forces also demolished the house of Amir Faqir, a local commander of LI, in Shalobar area and arrested at least 50 suspected militants in the area early on Tuesday morning.

Sources said that forces conducted a house-to-house search operation in some localities. They said that nobody was allowed to enter or leave the area during the daylong search operation. The arrested men were shifted to a nearby army centre.

Sources said that body of a suspected militant was spotted in the area. However, local officials said that they had no knowledge about the dead body.

Meanwhile, security forces released 281 Sipah tribesmen, who were arrested during a search operation last week.