ISLAMABAD, 21 November 2006 — A BBC correspondent based in South Waziristan went missing in Islamabad yesterday.
Dilawar Khan Wazir, who had come to Islamabad on an official assignment, went missing as he was returning to South Waziristan.
People informed Wazir’s brother, Zulfikar Ali, a student at Quaid-e-Azam University, that Wazir had had an accident. He could not, however, be contacted on his cell phone since it was switched off. Ijaz Mehr, a BBC correspondent in Islamabad, said, “We checked with all the hospitals in Islamabad but no one by the name of Dilawar Khan Wazir had been admitted.”
BBC staff members contacted Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the chief army spokesman and were told to contact the Interior Ministry. Punjab and Frontier police had no clue about Wazir’s whereabouts nor they had any information about any accident.
Unknown militants had gunned down Wazir’s younger brother at Kari Kot in South Waziristan on Aug. 30 this year.
Earlier this month the bureau chief of Pakistan Press International in Islamabad, Ismail Malik, was killed by unknown assailants in Sector F/6-1 area. Malik was a senior journalist who believed in independent reporting.
Local journalists have staged several protests in front of Parliament House here demanding the arrest of Malik’s killers but so far there have been no arrests.
