Islamabad, Feb. 12 (PTI): Two officials of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission were among eight persons who have been kidnapped by unidentified gunmen from a troubled northwestern area near the Afghan border.

“The officials, Ziaullah and Bisaat Khan, were kidnapped yesterday by unidentified armed men in the Sheikh Badin area near the Lakki Marwat and Dera Ismail Khan districts,” said local police chief Akbar Nasir.

Both officials were technicians and were on a routine visit to conduct a geological survey for mineral exploration in the mountainous area. The other abducted men include their driver Safdar and five locals.

Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan Tariq Azeezuddin was also kidnapped yesterday. He was on his way from the northwestern city of Peshawar to Kabul.

Today, the authorities searched for Azeezuddin in the Pakistani tribal region plagued by bandits and militants.

“Our law enforcement and other agencies in Khyber are carrying out a search operation,” said interior ministry spokesman, Javed Iqbal Cheema. “We hope we should be able to trace and recover him soon.” A security official said the envoy was to change cars at the border but he did not show up and was believed to have not reached the border.

Pakistani authorities were reluctant to say if Azizuddin had been kidnapped, and Cheema refused to comment on media reports that militants had offered to release the envoy in exchange for a Taliban commander, Mullah Mansour Dadullah, who was caught yesterday.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai was sure the envoy had been snatched. “The Pakistan ambassador to Afghanistan has been kidnapped while travelling to Afghanistan,” Karzai said in Kabul, during a conference on education. “I hope he is safe and I hope he will be released soon.”

The historic Khyber Pass is the main road link to landlocked Afghanistan in northwestern Pakistan. Khyber is notorious for smugglers and bandits, but unlike other parts of the tribal belt on the Afghan border it has been relatively free of the violence linked to al Qaida and the Taliban, though militant activity has picked up in adjoining regions.

Scores of people were killed late last year in clashes between tribal militants loyal to two rival clerics in Khyber.

Four Pakistani workers of the International Committee of the Red Cross went missing in the same region earlier this month.