Group of student, teachers and relatives captured
Militants kidnapped about 400 students, teachers and relatives drove away from a school in a troubled tribal region in northwest Pakistan, police said on Monday.
The students from a cadet college in the tribal North Waziristan region were going to the northwestern town of Bannu in about 30 buses after the college closed for its summer vacation, Bannu town police chief Iqbal Marwat told AFP.
"Only two buses carrying some 25 students reached Bannu," Marwat said, adding that about 28 buses carrying around 400 students were missing.
"They have been kidnapped by Taliban militants," Marwat told AFP.
The college is an army-run educational institution for civilians. Those kidnapped include students and civilian staff, he said.
Sources near the college in Razmak said the students are aged between 15 and 25 years and were not training for the army, but were following a secular curriculum.
Mirza Mohammad Jihadi, an adviser on tribal affairs to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani also told local television that he had reports "they were kidnapped by Taliban militants."
Javed Alam, vice principal of the college said the vehicles were carrying more than 300 students and some 30 staff members and employees of the college when they were stopped at Bakka Khel town near Bannu.
"Militants started firing in the air to stop the vehicles and then they forcibly drove them to unknown place" Alam told a private television channel.
Officials said they had started negotiations with the militants to secure the release of the students.
Bannu’s chief administrator, Kamran Zeb, has made contact with tribal elders as part of efforts to establish a dialogue with the militants, an official told AFP.
"We are negotiating with the militants through tribal elders," Marwat also confirmed. "We hope they will be freed unharmed."