ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Gunmen kidnapped a Polish engineer in northern Pakistan on Sunday, shooting dead his two drivers and a security guard during the abduction in the latest violence to hit the nation, officials said.
Poland's foreign ministry confirmed the kidnapping of Piotr Stanczak, while the engineer's company said he was ambushed as he and colleagues were travelling to oil plants northeast of the Pakistani capital to carry out some tests.
The kidnapped engineer's sister, Danuta Paszek, made a tearful plea on Polish television to his captors to release him.
"Anyone in my situation would ask for help to save him so he can come home safe and well," she said.
Pakistan police said a search was underway after the gunmen fled with the engineer in their own vehicle near the village of Pind Sultani in Attock district, about 110 kilometres (68 miles) from Islamabad.
"Three Pakistanis, a security guard and two drivers, were shot dead by unknown gunmen as they kidnapped Piotr Stanczak, a Polish engineer working with an oil company in the area," police official Kazim Ali told AFP.
The incident comes one week after the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad which left 60 people dead, including Westerners, heightening concerns about instability in Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led "war on terror."
Pakistan's military has been waging major battles against Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants, accused of launching attacks on international troops across the border with Afghanistan.
Troops on Sunday killed at least 16 Taliban militants as part of the six-week long offensive in the remote tribal region of Bajaur on the border which has so far claimed the lives of more than 1,000 militants.
Senior Pakistani police were meeting with officials from the engineer's company Geofizyka Krakow Limited about how to rescue him, an officer told AFP.
Authorities in Poland are also in contact with police, a foreign ministry spokesman said in Warsaw. The company has also set up a crisis team, its marketing director Stanislaw Szabelski told Poland's PAP news agency.
Nobody claimed has responsibility for the attack, but Taliban militants have been blamed for abducting Westerners in the past.
Asked who was behind the latest kidnapping, police official Faisal Manzoor said: "You know the prevailing circumstances in the country. The (Afghan) border is just 16 kilometres (10 miles) from here."
In August, Taliban militants kidnapped two Chinese telecommunication engineers from restive Swat valley in North West Frontier Province.
The Chinese, working for Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment, were still being held by the Taliban who were demanding the release of fellow militants from custody in return for their freedom, officials said.
Two Chinese engineers, who were working on a multi-million-dollar hydroelectric dam project, were also kidnapped in late 2004 by Islamic militants in the troubled tribal region of South Waziristan.
One of the hostages died in a botched rescue bid in a major embarrassment for Pakistan, which counts China as its closest ally and biggest military supplier.
Amid concerns about Pakistan's stability, world powers last week pledged development aid to the country at the United Nations in New York.
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