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Kohat: Militants in Pakistan have kidnapped 26 police recruits on their way to college, police said on Thursday while security forces battled Islamist insurgents elsewhere in the northwest.
The recruits were travelling on three buses to a training college in the town of Hangu in North West Frontier Province when gunmen abducted them on Wednesday in the Orakzai tribal region. The militants freed the drivers.
"The drivers told us that militants had kidnapped the recruits," said Hangu police officer Mohammad Idrees.
Militants battling security forces have kidnapped numerous government officials, soldiers and policemen over the past year and are still holding many of them.
Pakistani Taliban also say they are holding two Chinese telecommunications engineers abducted last week along with a Pakistani driver and guard.
Infiltration
Pakistan has been a US ally in its fight against Islamist militancy since the September 11, 2001, attacks but the United States has repeatedly asked it to do more, in particular to stop Taliban infiltrating into Afghanistan from border sanctuaries.
Pakistani security forces have killed more than 500 insurgents, the government says, in a surge of violence since militants suspended talks with a new civilian government in June.
The violence has worried investors, already gloomy about a sagging economy and incessant squabbling between political parties, as well as allies hoping to see the government turn its attention to the nuclear-armed country's other problems.
Most of the fighting has been in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border and in the Swat Valley in North West Frontier Province.
A military spokesman in Swat, which until last year was a tourist destination, said eight militants were killed yesterday when troops shelled their hideouts. The military said 30 militants were killed in the same region on Wednesday.
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