By Shafqat Ali
Islamabad, July 4: Taliban militants have abducted three mediapersons, including a US journalist, officials said. "The local Taliban have kidnapped three journalists from Lakanro area," a security official in Mohammad Agency said on Friday. He said the local Taliban, while accepting the responsibility of kidnapping, said that abductees would be released after "interrogation".
"One of the abducted journalists is from South Waziristan. The journalists were kidnapped on their way from here to Peshawar," the official said.
The militants detained freelance Pakistani reporter Pir Zubair Shah and photographer Akhtar Soomro in Ziarat village in the Mohmand region late on Thursday, the official said. "We detained them because they were secretly taking pictures of our people and places. Now, our council will meet and decide what to do," an unnamed spokesman for the pro-Taliban, said.
Taliban militants linked to Al Qaeda have taken control of swathes of territory in north-western Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtun regions along the Afghan border, including parts of Mohammand Agency. "We’re doing our best. We’ve sent a delegation of tribal elders to the kidnappers to get them released," said the official, who declined to be identified.
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1 killed, 11 hurt in Pakistan blast
Quetta (Pakistan), July 4: A bomb exploded on a busy street in the southwestern Pakistan city of Quetta on Friday, killing a 4-year-old girl and wounding 11 other people.
The was bomb rigged to a motorcycle and it exploded outside a commercial bank, said Raja Mohammed Ishtiaq, a Quetta police officer. Four of the wounded were traffic police on duty nearby, and others were passers-by, said Mohammed Khalid, another police officer.
The explosion damaged windows of four cars parked in front of the bank and the wreckage of the motorcycle, to which Mr Ishtiaq said the bomb was attached, lay scattered on the roadside. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Quetta is the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province where authorities have blamed armed tribesmen for bombings and attacks against the government. Ethnic-Baluch tribesmen are waging a low-level insurgency to press calls for greater provincial autonomy and control over natural resources in Baluchistan. —AP
