Updated

Pakistan's military says the country's powerful army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, has confirmed death sentences awarded by military courts to 12 "hardcore terrorists" over their involvement in a series of attacks against security forces.

In a statement Thursday, the military said the men included a Pakistani Taliban militant, Muhammad Arbi, who abetted the 2012 attack on a jail in the northwestern district of Bannu. It says a large number of militants managed to escape when a group of gunmen attacked the jail.

Pakistan has hanged nearly 350 inmates, mostly routine criminals, since lifting a 2008 moratorium on executions in 2014 after a Taliban attack on a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar killed 150 people, mostly children.