By DPA
Kabul : Tariq Azizuddin, Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, has been reported missing, senior Afghan officials confirmed Monday amid speculation that he had been kidnapped.
The report followed military officials’ announcement that Pakistani security forces had captured a senior Taliban commander, Mullah Mansour Dadullah, following a gun-battle along the border.
The ambassador was travelling on the highway between Peshawar and Kabul, the Afghan officials told DPA.
The BBC later quoted unidentified sources as saying that the ambassador had been kidnapped in a semi-autonomous tribal area where Muslim extremists are known to be active.
Military officials earlier had said Mansour Dadullah, younger brother of Mullah Dadullah, a widely-feared Taliban commander in eastern Afghanistan, was wounded in the gun-battle, which erupted after he and five other Taliban members crossed into Qilla Saifullah town in the southern province of Balochistan Monday.
“Mansour Dadullah and his five accomplices were captured after a gunfight in which they were also wounded,” an official at the Pakistan military’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) directorate said.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, also denied some reports that Mansour Dadullah was killed in the fighting.
He added that the Pakistani security forces did not suffer any causality.
President Pervez Musharraf is under the American pressure to do more to eradicate the safe havens and capture or kill the Islamic militants as part of the broader war on terrorism.
Pakistani Taliban militants and their Al Qaeda allies are blamed for launching dozens of suicide bombings across the country in the past 13 months that have killed more than 1,000 people.