ISLAMABAD, 23 August 2005 — Abductors in Iraq have released 11 Pakistanis who were kidnapped in Iraq this month, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday.
Mohammed Naeem Khan said, the Pakistanis, who worked with a Kuwaiti firm, went missing while traveling by bus from the southern Iraqi city of Basra to the capital Baghdad on Aug. 13. He did not specify their professions or what work the company, Al-Hamra, did in Iraq — or whether any ransom was paid for their release.
“We have just been informed by the Kuwaiti company that all 11 Pakistanis have been freed. Thanks be to God,” Khan said. “They will return to Kuwait within the next 24 hours.”
He said they were staying for now in Basra. It was at least the fifth reported incident in which Pakistani nationals have been abducted in Iraq.
In April, a Pakistani Embassy official was kidnapped and later freed. In July 2004, a Pakistani engineer and a driver were abducted and killed. Khan renewed a call for Pakistanis not to go to Iraq.
“The situation in Iraq is precarious ... We had advised that Pakistanis should not travel to Iraq at this stage because of the security situation,” he said, adding that the government was constantly monitoring the situation.
Two Indians and three Egyptians abducted at the same time had also been freed, Khan said. There was no immediate confirmation from either Cairo or New Delhi.
“There were 11 Pakistanis, three Egyptians and two Indians also, they were also kidnapped. They were released only today,” he told reporters.
“The people were being bussed and they were going to Baghdad. I think (they were) close to Nassiriya when they were kidnapped.”
Iraq has been rocked by a wave of abductions of foreigners since April 2004. Egypt’s envoy to Iraq, Ihab Al-Sharif, was kidnapped on July 2 by gunmen as he stopped his car on a Baghdad street and was killed a few days later.
A statement purportedly posted on the Internet by the group of Al-Qaeda’s Iraq frontman, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility.
Three days earlier, Pakistan’s ambassador to Iraq narrowly survived a militant attack on his convoy. Islamabad closed its mission in Baghdad and envoy Younis Khan was evacuated to the Jordanian capital Amman.
In April an employee at the Pakistani Embassy in Baghdad was abducted as he went to a mosque for evening prayers in April. He was released two weeks later.
In July 2004 two migrant workers from Pakistani Kashmir were killed in Iraq after their captors alleged they were spying for the United States and that Pakistan was planning to deploy troops in Iraq.
Another kidnapped Pakistani was released the same month after eight days in captivity.
The abductions and attacks on Pakistanis have come despite Islamabad’s opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
President Pervez Musharraf, a key US ally in the “war on terror”, has refused requests from both the United States and the Iraqi leadership to send peacekeeping troops. Indian nationals have also been caught up in the Iraq violence.
In August 2004 three Indian truck drivers working for a Kuwaiti oil company were kidnapped and later released, resulting in an Indian government ban on all travel to Iraq.
