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Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Pakistani volunteers carry a wounded bus passenger following a blast in Karachi, Pakistan on Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012. The blast that ripped through the bus set the vehicle on fire and reduced it to little more than a charred skeleton, killing scores of people and left many injured. Police were trying to determine whether the explosion was caused by a bomb or a gas cylinder, said police spokesman. Many buses in Pakistan run on natural gas. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)

Twenty-one tribal policemen believed to have been kidnapped by the Taliban were found shot dead in Pakistan's troubled northwest tribal region early Sunday, government officials said.

Officials found the bodies shortly after midnight in the Jabai area of Frontier Region Peshawar after being notified by one policeman who escaped, said Naveed Akbar Khan, a top political official in the area. Another policeman was found seriously wounded, said Khan.

The 23 policemen went missing before dawn Thursday when militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons attacked two posts in Frontier Region Peshawar. Two policemen were also killed in the attacks.

Militants lined the policemen up on a cricket pitch late Saturday night and gunned them down, said another local official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion fell on the Pakistani Taliban, who have been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for the past few years. The tribal region is the main sanctuary for the Taliban in Pakistan.