Pakistani nuclear scientists abducted
Two nuclear scientists have been abducted near Pakistan’s north-western border with Afghanistan, police have said, in the latest embarrassment for the government of President Pervez Musharraf.
The scientists disappeared on Monday, the same day as Tariq Azizuddin, Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, was reportedly abducted while travelling through the Khyber Pass to Kabul.
Their vehicle was intercepted by masked gunmen in the Dera Ismail Khan district, a stronghold of local militants, although it was not known whether the abductors were “militants or members of some criminal gang”, said Akbar Nasir, the local police chief.
Pakistani authorities were reluctant to say if Mr Azizuddin had been kidnapped, and have refused to comment on reports that militants had offered to release him in exchange for Mansour Dadullah, a Taliban commander who was captured by the army on Monday.
The Khyber region has long been a base for bandits and smugglers but has seen little of the unrest linked to an uprising by Islamist militants and Taliban sympathisers in adjoining areas of Afghanistan.