ISLAMABAD — Two nuclear energy officials have been abducted by masked men in Dera Ismail Khan near the Afghan border, police said yesterday.
The kidnappers bundled the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) workers and their driver into a vehicle in Sheikh Badin, a town in militancy-hit Dera Ismail Khan district, local police chief Akbar Nasir said. “They are technicians from the PAEC, they were whisked away early Monday morning,” Nasir said.
The officials were on a routine visit to conduct a geological survey for mineral exploration in the mountainous area, which adjoins Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions, the police chief said.
“We don’t know if the abductors were militants or members of some criminal gang,” he said, adding that they were believed to be from the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. “A search is under way. We are contacting local people... We are all trying but so far we have no clues.”
“The technicians were kidnapped at gunpoint along with their driver and five local people,” Romail Akram, a senior police official in the area said. “The local people have been released but the technicians and their driver are still missing. We don’t have any idea, so far, who has done it.”
The abduction of the PAEC officials came the day Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan disappeared while on his way from the northwestern city of Peshawar to the Afghan capital Kabul. The envoy, Tariq Azizuddin, was feared abducted in the tribal district of Khyber, raising concern about growing insecurity ahead of parliamentary elections set for Monday.
Security in Pakistan’s tribal belt on the Afghan border has deteriorated in recent months with militants linked to the Taleban and Al-Qaeda carrying out a suicide bomb campaign against security forces and politicians campaigning for Monday’s election.
— With input from agencies
